#iran-protests

#iran-protests

In early January, widespread demonstrations driven by economic hardship, political discontent and sustained foreign pressure posed one of the most serious domestic challenges Iran's leadership has faced in years. The unrest soon gave way to a sharpening regional standoff, as President Donald Trump ordered large US military deployments to the Middle East and issued warnings demanding that Iran curb its nuclear program and ballistic missile development.

Up until a few hours earlier, doctors and patients were still sending me photos on WhatsApp; pellet wounds to the back, the hands, the head. Painful injuries, frightening injuries but survivable. The kinds of wounds that could be treated, that suggested the violence still had limits. Then, at eight o'clock, everything went dark. Internet, mobile phones, messages, maps all gone. Minutes later, the gunfire started.

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE - Iran is experiencing its most consequential period of internal in years. Nationwide demonstrations driven by economic collapse, social grievance, and political frustration have been met with force, mass arrests, and near-total information control. The scale and coordination of the response suggest a regime that feels threatened but not unmoored, confident in its ability to absorb pressure while preventing fragmentation.

The United States says recent protests across Iran were the result of the regime's "mismanagement" and not foreign influences, as claimed by Tehran, as the death toll continues to rise from a violent crackdown on the biggest threat to the Islamic republic in years. In a post published on X on January 21, USAbehFarsi, the official Persian-language social media platform of the US State Department, said the protests, which began late last month, were "an inevitable uprising of the Iranian people after years of repression."

Ever since the 2009 post-election uprising, sporadic outbursts of public anger have become somewhat the order of the day, mostly silenced brutally for a while only to fester and uncork again on another occasion. The street protest is not the sole medium through which opposition has tried to convey its dissent. Iranians have tried everything be it the very narrow and funnelled channel of elections between the limited choices offered by the state.

A 16-year-old was among protesters sexually assaulted in custody by the security forces in Iran during the nationwide uprising that has left thousands dead, according to a human rights group. Two people, one of them a child, detained in the city of Kermanshah in western Iran told the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) that they were subjected to sexual abuse by riot police during their arrest. During the transfer, security forces touched their bodies with batons.

But with insufficient military hardware in the region, warnings from allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, concern among top aides about the implications and effectiveness of the strike options, and secret backchannel talks with the Iranians, he chose not to pull the trigger. This account of Trump's decision-making over the past ten days is based on interviews with four U.S. officials, two Israeli officials and two other sources with knowledge of the behind-the-scenes discussions.

Norway-based rights group Iran Human Rights (IHR) says it has verified that Iranian security forces have killed 3,428 protesters, but warns the actual toll could be several times higher. Other estimates place the death toll at more than 5,000 - and possibly as high as 20,000, IHR said. The opposition Iran International channel based outside the country has said at least 12,000 people were killed during the protests, citing senior government and security sources.

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran's former shah, has called on the west to help unseat Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader. Speaking on Friday at a news conference in Washington, Pahlavi said: The Iranian people are taking decisive action on the ground. It is now time for the international community to join them fully. With the protests in Iran appearing to slow down, Donald Trump seems to have temporarily pulled back from threats to strike the country.

The country's supreme leader says foreign-backed protests caused massive damage and killed several thousands'. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has accused the United States and Israel of direct involvement in the violence that accompanied weeks of protests across the country, describing US President Donald Trump as a criminal. The latest anti-Iran sedition was different in that the US president personally became involved, Iranian state media quoted Khamenei as saying on Saturday.

The Iranian people are taking decisive actions on the ground, it is now time for the international community to join them fully, he told reporters at a news conference in Washington. He said foreign involvement did not require boots on the ground but instead targeted intervention that could weaken the regime's repressive apparatus, such as targeting the leadership of the Revolutionary Guards.

holding signs such as "Trump, don't let them kill us." Pahlavi insisted that the regime would fall, but said it would take more time and more blood without outside military intervention. He called specifically for strikes on the "architecture of repression" - targets related to command-and-control of the Revolutionary Guards, for example. Asked repeatedly about Trump's delays, Pahlavi said: "I believe the president is a man of his word."

In late December, Iran experienced the beginnings of an uprising driven primarily by economic pressures, initially emerging among merchant bazaaris and subsequently spreading across broader segments of society. As events unfolded rapidly, calls for regime change became the focus of international attention. Consistent with its response to previous protest movements, the Iranian government once again opted for repression rather than engagement, violently suppressing demonstrations instead of allowing popular grievances to be articulated and addressed.

Coercive cohesion is the cement of the system: The ability of parallel security and political institutions to keep acting together, even when legitimacy erodes. When that cohesion holds, the system absorbs shocks that would more conventional states would fall under. Iran is not a single pyramid with one man at the apex. It is a heterarchical, networked state: Overlapping hubs of power around the Supreme Leader's office, the Revolutionary Guards, intelligence organs, clerical gatekeepers, and a patronage economy.

As bitter cold descends on Ukraine, so has a fresh barrage of Russian drone and missile strikes. Recent attacks on transformer substations and power plants have plunged Kyiv into its worst wartime heating and power outage. Also, as opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado meets US President Donald Trump in Washington, Venezuelans are watching with a mix of hope and unease.

It Was Just an Accident centers on a group of former prisoners who kidnap a man they believe was their interrogator and grapple with whether to exact revenge, and Panahi says the film drew directly from his own experience with state violence and repression. Panahi has been repeatedly arrested in Iran, served prison sentences, and was recently sentenced in absentia to an additional year in prison and a two-year travel ban.

New penalties come as US President Trump welcomes purported Iranian decision to halt execution of antigovernment demonstrators. The United States has imposed new sanctions against Iran, targeting political and security officials over the crackdown on antigovernment protesters, amid US President Donald Trump's threats to intervene militarily against the country. The US penalties on Tuesday targeted Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNCS), and several other officials, who it said were the architects of Tehran's brutal response to the demonstrations.