The new figures came from the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in multiple rounds of unrest in Iran. The group verifies each death with a network of activists on the ground in Iran.
It identified the dead as including at least 5777 protesters, 214 government-affiliated forces, 86 children and 49 civilians who weren't demonstrating. The crackdown has seen over 41,800 arrests, it added.
The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the death toll given authorities cutting off the internet and disrupting calls into the Islamic Republic.
Iran's government has put the death toll at a far lower 3117, saying 2427 were civilians and security forces, and labelled the rest "terrorists." In the past, Iran's theocracy has under counted or not reported fatalities from unrest.
That death toll exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest there in decades, and recalls the chaos surrounding Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The protests in Iran began on December 28, sparked by the fall of the Iranian currency, the rial, and quickly spread across the country. They were met by a violent crackdown by Iran's theocracy, the scale of which is only starting to become clear as the country has faced more than two weeks of internet blackout - the most comprehensive in its history.
Iran's UN ambassador told a UN Security Council meeting late Monday that Trump's repeated threats to use military force against the country "are neither ambiguous nor misinterpreted."
Amir Saeid Iravani also repeated allegations that the US leader incited violence by "armed terrorist groups" supported by the United States and Israel, but gave no evidence to support his claims.
Iranian state media has tried to accuse forces abroad for the protests as the theocracy remains broadly unable to address the country's ailing economy, which is still squeezed by international sanctions, particularly over its nuclear program.
On Tuesday, exchange shops offered the record-low rial-to-dollar rate in Tehran.
Already, Iran has vastly limited its subsidised currency rates to cut down on corruption. It also has offered the equivalent of $US7 a month to most people in the country to cover rising costs. However, Iran's people have seen the rial fall from 32,000 to $US1 just a decade ago - which has devoured the value of their savings.
Iran projected its power across the Mideast through the "Axis of Resistance," a network of proxy militant groups in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq, and other places. It was also seen as a defensive buffer, intended to keep conflict away from Iranian borders. But it has collapsed after Israel targeted Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and others during the Gaza war.
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