Farzaneh Tavakoli

Farzaneh Tavakoli (Persian: فرزانه توکلی) was a 40-year-old woman from Arak in Markazi Province, the mother of two children and the head of her household, supporting her family on her own.

On Friday, 19 Dey 1404 (9 January 2026), during the protests in Arak, she was shot by government forces. According to the women's committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the bullet struck her head while she was holding her daughter's hand, and security agents at the scene tried to arrest her daughter but failed. Hengaw verified her killing among seven more women identified in Tehran, Shiraz, Arak and Isfahan, and HRANA lists her among its confirmed victims. Her name appears, with her father's name Sadrollah, in the list of the dead published by the government in February 2026.

Her family was reportedly made to promise that her burial would be held in silence in a village near Arak before her body was released. Videos of her funeral were nonetheless published, and she is remembered among the Arak dead of that week alongside Amirhossein Dolatabadi, Ermia Fazli, Babak Jamali and Ehsan Akbari. One memorial post for her carried the verse: "I bore you with my heart's blood, and I gave you to the motherland."