The huge death tolls in Iran being splashed all over the media are sourced to an outfit in Fairfax, VA called “Human Rights Activists in Iran” that is overwhelmingly funded by the US government. What is their methodology? Is it credible? Who cares? Just pump the big numbers out.
National Endowment for Democracy (NED) received $315 million in FY2025, and GOP appropriators just released their FY2026 spending bill – NED will again receive $315 million. This “Human Rights Activists in Iran” outfit, based in Northern Virginia, says it’s an NED grantee.
Adding to your post, there is an active operation in Social media done by the NED as well.
This was also reported in the Cuban Telegram that I subscribed to. Let me add their description as spoiler:
Brief teaser:
- 🇮🇷🇺🇸🇮🇱 Most of the figures on “peaceful protesters” killed in Iran come from anonymous doctors, the Virginia-based organization Human Rights Activists in Iran, and the British media outlet Iran International.
spoiler
🇮🇷🇺🇸🇮🇱 Most of the figures on “peaceful protesters” killed in Iran come from anonymous doctors, the Virginia-based organization Human Rights Activists in Iran, and the British media outlet Iran International.
These organizations have been funded by the United States for years. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of such organizations around the world.
For their part, Bild and Axios published figures of 1,000 deaths, citing Israeli government sources (journalist Barak Ravid). Time magazine, owned by Marc Benioff, an American and co-founder of Salesforce, also speaks of thousands.
Other media outlets, such as India Times, are much more cautious in their estimates, claiming that dozens of people have died and that thousands, not millions, participated in the protests.
The United States and Israel have been dreaming of destroying Iran for years, and now the plan of American experts is literally coming to fruition. Just look at the strategy of the American think tank Brookings on Iran, entitled “Which Path to Persia?” (https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_iran_strategy.pdf), which is more like a roadmap for the destruction of the country: economic suffocation, financing and arming terrorist groups to destabilize it from within, manipulating public opinion to justify repeated attacks by the US and Israel against Iran.
The document openly states that, in order to achieve the goal, it is necessary to lie to the public in order to create consensus in favor of regime change, demonize the country (for example, by introducing the concept of a “shadow fleet”), and that US-backed opposition groups are so unpopular that they could not exist without constant US aid. Many points of this strategy are now also being applied to Russia.
All the major US think tanks (Atlantic Council, Brookings, Carnegie) depend on funding from arms manufacturers. Does anyone really believe that these forces care about “freedom” and the interests of the Iranian people or the world? Everything becomes clear just by skimming through the plan’s index (https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_iran_strategy.pdf). Israeli experts are already openly declaring that they want to turn Iran into another Syria.
This excellent information! Should probably be its own post, especially the part about the “Which Path to Persia” think tank paper. Anyone following what is happening with Iran needs to read it, just like anyone following Russia-Ukraine needs to read RAND’s “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia”.
Someone posted the “Which Path to Persia” document in c/latestagecapitalism -> https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10352199
Sadly, it didn’t get that much interaction even though it has valuable data such as their plans to provoke ethnic tensions using the Kurds and other minorities within Iran.
LOL, this deserves its own post in c/funny!
Excellent, thank you. Maybe copy this post there (which path to Persian thread)* or at least the relevant bit
Are you doing ok?
I am doing ok. How about you?
Much better since I got the device working and had a phone interview, which didn’t work for either of us, and an interview scheduled later in the week. But all the busy-ness in 3D and the news has me a bit tight in the shoulders.
A lot of Wikimedia Foundation employees may be backed by NED. This could compromise the NPOV policy that the English Wikipedia undeniably enacted.
My cousin’s girlfriend’s sister’s boyfriend who still lives in Iran sent them a message that says it’s up to 12,000!
Yes they’re in a position to count and that was what they wanted to communicate, why?
My father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate says it was 100,000!
We need to bomb NOW before it gets exponential and they kill everyone on earth in 3 hours or so
My girlfriend’a cousin’s sister’s dog’s brother’s pet rock said it was FIVE HUNDRED BRAZILIANS!!! We need to start bombing NOW!!!
Great stuff, thanks. Some things really never change, like numbers being thrown out willy nilly. Also wanna say that I’m happy to see these kinda posts. The mini effortposting is back.
Case in point. CBS is literally ran by a pro-genocide Zionist.
Yup. I literally rolled my eyes so hard, I got a headache.
The best was the Tiananmen square mention. Comparing an event that you don’t understand, where you are being lied to about the number of casualties, with another event you don’t understand, where you are also being lied to about the number of casualties. Prime lib shit.
lemmy.world being skeptic about cbs? The world is healing
How did you get access to the 2025 990 for NED? How do I find this myself?
I couldn’t find that one in particular but I did find the 2024 990 for NED if that works for you -> https://www.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/National-Endowment-for-Democracy-FY-2024.pdf
It doesn’t have HRANA listed as a recipient and this was released on 8/12/25 meaning the 2024-2025 will be released around Late summer of 2026, so is there any evidence that the document posted above is real?
Maybe, they change the names(?) because the one that I have referenced before does exist. You can find it in page 251-252
Also, in their website(https://www.hra-iran.org/introduction/), there are references to the NED:
This leads me to believe that they might have hidden that document that was available before.
Thats a different nonprofit I believe, I think I might have found the right document, Its the 990 for HRANA not the NED.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/800841029/202512779349300201/full
I still cannot find the connection to the NED via their 990 however so I am very curious where that bottom left image came from
Good catch. As for the website(https://www.hra-iran.org/introduction/), isn’t that HRANA? If it is, then in their website there is a reference to the NED. The connection is there but the 990 form is not available(I speculate that it was intentionally hidden).
No yes that does belong to HRANA and the connection is listed there but im saying I cannot find that bottom left image of NED involvement with HRANA specifically as the 48th recipient of a grant over 5k. Im just wondering if anyone is able to find where that comes from so I can use it as a resource in the future
I will stay on the lookout for that document. Maybe, I can find it later on and I will ping you here if I do find it.
Meanwhile, maybe, the other organization that is listed in 990 Form(Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran) and the reference in the HRANA website can help you in the meantime as a resource.
deleted by creator
Someone posted this on Twitter:
I don’t know if that’s what you’re looking for or where to find the full document.
Nah man you posted a form 990 underneath the headlines, see that “form 990 2024”? The problem is I cant even find this one on the IRS website as they only released the form 990 2023 in august of 2025…Are we sure this is real? We need to verify it.
Ah. Right. No, sorry, i can’t help there. Have you tried ProPublica?
Regardless, i don’t think anyone has any doubt that the NED is funded by the US government. You don’t need an IRS form to know that. And the fact that these US based “Iran Human Rights” orgs work with the NED is publicly documented on their sites:
Here is NED calling them a “partner”: https://www.ned.org/ned-partner-recognized-for-promotion-of-human-rights-and-democracy-in-iran/
And here is the group admitting to receiving NED funding: https://www.hra-iran.org/article/an-inner-view-to-the-human-rights-activists-in-iran-keyvan-rafiee-founder-and-director-of-human-rights-activists-in-iran/
Therefore, HRA expanded its network and decided to start receiving financial aid from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a non-governmental and non-profit organization based in the United States.
Like I do not doubt in the slightest that the NED is funding HRANA but without the ability to find it yourself this is pretty useless.
These are all the NED 990 forms that I’ve found on ProPublica where HRANA is mentioned by searching the employer identification number 80-0841029 inside each link:
- 2022: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521344831/202322109349300402/full
- 2021: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521344831/202202249349302045/full
- 2020: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521344831/202122289349304527/full
- 2019: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521344831/202002309349302720/full
- 2018: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521344831/201912259349300736/full
- 2016: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521344831/201732219349300123/full
- 2015: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521344831/201612289349300621/full
- 2014: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521344831/201502249349302470/full
- 2013: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521344831/201432269349301818/full
HRANA is definitely on that NED money
Thanks king
FOUND IT THANKS TO YOU ITS FROM THE 2015 990. Thats so unintentionally deceptive lmfao
In 2016 the NED changed the name of the recipient of the grant on their 990 from Human Rights Activists in Iran to the acronym HRAI. This will help anyone reading prove to those you are radicalizing that the sources being cited by mainstream news are on the NED payroll still which segues nicely into talking about the NED and its history of destabilization.
Creator of the image, like me, didn’t ctrl+f the tax id of the "n"go like we should have.
Ive been looking for like 20 minutes and I’m not finding this document
At least they cite their source for verification. Their criticism against enemies of Pax Americana often omitted the source of their information if the unreliability of the source become widely known.
