Afshin Esfandiari

Afshin Esfandiari (c. 2001 – 18 Dey 1404 / 8 January 2026) was a final-year architecture student at the University of Fardis in Karaj and a passionate mountain climber. Friends remember a young man who studied and climbed in the same week, not a bystander. On 18 Dey 1404, during protests in Fardis, Karaj, he was shot in the neck by police and died. The same day another architecture student, Sadra Soltani, was killed in Haft Howz, Narmak, Tehran, two classmates of a generation cut down together. AvaToday and Hamvatan24 carried his portrait and the climbing detail that made him recognizable beyond a casualty list.