The World Economic Forum is facing calls to freeze members of the Iranian regime at a summit in Davos this week.
UANI CEO Mark Wallace, who previously served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, cited reports from human rights groups about the massacre of Iranian civilians by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime.
BANNED Iranian CROWN PRINCE UNVEILS 6-STEP PLAN TO APPLY PRESSURE ON TEHRAN REGIME
World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab speaks at the annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, file)
“This month, the Iranian regime carried out what some say is the largest massacre in its history,” Wallace wrote to Brende. “Araghchi is a member of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), which reportedly issued an order to fire live ammunition on Iranian civilians protesting. Estimates suggest that the regime killed at least 12,000 and as many as 20,000 Iranians over the course of a few days in January as they exercised their fundamental rights to demonstrate against the Ayatollah and his tyranny.”
“Receiving Iranian regime officials, such as Araghchi, whitewashing this record is deeply insulting and would be completely inappropriate to appear at a forum whose theme this year is ‘A Spirit of Dialogue.’ Instead of dialogue, the Islamic Republic offered bullets to these brave Iranians,” Wallace continued.
People gather during a protest against the Iranian regime on January 8, 2026 in Tehran. (Anonymous/Getty Images)
Iran’s supreme leader publicly acknowledged for the first time on Saturday that thousands of people have been killed during recent anti-government protests, according to reporting by the BBC.
TRUMP LEADERSHIP CREATES ‘RARE OPPORTUNITY’ FOR CHANGE IN IRAN, SAYS FORMER Iranian POLITICAL PRISONER
Khamenei made the comments during a public speech on Saturday, blaming the US for the unrest and violence and saying some protesters died “in an inhuman, cruel way.”
Protesters burn images of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a rally held in solidarity with the Iranian uprising in London on January 11, 2026. (Carlos Jasso/AFP via Getty Images)
The US-based Iranian human rights activists News Agency estimates that this number was more than 3,000 people killed more than about three weeks of unrest, although Iranian authorities have not released an official death toll and other estimates have been higher.
Videos verified by BBC Persian and BBC Verify show Iranian security forces shooting at protesters during the unrest.
Trump told Politico on Saturday that “it is time to look for new leadership in Iran,” after reading out a series of hostile messages from Khamenei’s X account accusing the president of responsibility for the violence.
The death toll at protests in Iran has risen in recent days as human rights groups say thousands of people have been killed. (MAHSA/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
“What he is guilty of as the leader of a country is the complete destruction of the country and the use of violence at a level never seen before,” Trump said, according to Politico. “Leadership is about respect, not about fear and death.”
Read Wallace’s full letter to the WEF below (App users click here)
