Canadian lawmaker Ali Ehsassi has pledged to refer findings that Iranian security forces possessed paintball guns from a Canadian-owned brand during the 2022 protest crackdown, which left scores of demonstrators blinded, to federal authorities.
The report identified Tippmann guns, a brand owned by Montreal-based KORE Outdoor, in the possession of Iranian security personnel. Investigators could not establish whether the guns were responsible for any of the blinding injuries.
“We’ll take this report. I was not aware of it, and we’ll send it to the appropriate authorities,” Ehsassi told Iran International’s Eye for Iran.
Ehsassi, a Liberal who represents Willowdale, said he did not know whether Global Affairs Canada had reviewed the investigation, published in September 2025 by IranWire and the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center.
Asked what Canada could do about the equipment reaching Iranian security forces, he pointed to federal funding to strengthen sanctions enforcement.
Iran International contacted Global Affairs Canada and KORE Outdoor for comment. Neither responded by the deadline for this report.
How did Tippmann guns reach Iran?
Shahin Milani of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center told Iran International that researchers found photographs showing Iranian security personnel with paintball guns bearing the Tippmann logo.
One photograph from 2018 shows a member of the Fatehin special unit holding a Tippmann marker. The report also includes a screenshot of the Iranian Paintball Association’s website offering a Tippmann marker for sale.
Some paintball guns seen in footage from the 2022 protests resembled Tippmann models, the researchers said, but image quality and distance made the brand difficult to confirm. Milani said investigators could not link a specific case of blinding to a Tippmann gun.
In October 2022, KORE Outdoor CEO Billy Ceranski condemned the use of the company’s paintball products to suppress protests in Iran. He said KORE complied with US import and export laws and had never sold goods directly or indirectly to countries on the US arms embargo list, including Iran.
Milani said Canadian authorities could start by asking KORE to identify its buyers and then ask those buyers where the equipment went next.
“You cannot just sell such devices and not care as to who actually ends up owning them,” Milani told Iran International.
Hundreds suffered eye injuries
A separate investigation by the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley found that about 120 people suffered partial or total blindness during the 2022–23 crackdown.
Researchers documented close-range shots to the face involving shotguns, paintball guns and tear gas canisters.
By November 2022, ophthalmologists at three Tehran hospitals had reported at least 500 serious eye injuries, while doctors in Kurdistan province reported at least 80 more.
In its investigation, IranWire and the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center documented 134 people injured by weapons described as less lethal across 47 cities in 24 provinces. At least 114 were injured by shotgun pellets and nine by paintball projectiles. Most of the injuries were to the head, face or eyes.
In one video from December 2022, a plainclothes agent fires a paintball gun at the face of a person being detained in Tehran’s Ekbatan neighborhood.
Blinding injuries documented again in January
Severe eye injuries were also reported during Iran’s January 2026 crackdown, although no link has been established between those cases and Tippmann guns.
Dr. Sarah Raza, a trauma and vascular interventional radiologist who advised wounded protesters remotely, told Iran International that patients feared their wounds would identify them as protesters if they sought medical care.
Raza cited reports of more than 400 gunshot-related eye injuries at a single Tehran hospital during the January 8 and 9 crackdown.
The report Ehsassi pledged to forward examined the 2022 crackdown. The weapons used in the January cases remain a separate question.
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