Tear gas filled the air as Iranian security forces attacked a crowd of protesters in central Tehran last week, hitting them with batons and firing rubber bullets into their faces.
Buffeted by the crowd, Arash Sadeghi, a human rights activist who has spent years in Iranian prisons, watched as plainclothes agents and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps militiamen beat women and teenagers, and loaded others into steel mesh cages mounted on the back of riot police vehicles.
“They showed no mercy,” he said over the phone from Tehran.
On Saturday, at least four people were killed in western Iran in clashes between demonstrators and security forces, human rights groups said, as protests continued around the country for their seventh day.
It is a scene that has repeated itself in Iran in recent years: protesters furious at the regime’s failures gathering in the streets, the security forces attacking them in response.
A still from a video shows one protester sitting in the road in Tehran as motorbike-riding security forces move in
IRAN INTERNATIONAL
This time, however, it could be different. At 3am Florida time on Friday, President Trump threatened to launch US strikes on the Islamic republic should the protests turn bloody. If the regime “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue”, he wrote on Truth Social. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
In response, Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s top security body, wrote on X that the US “should take care of their own soldiers”, a reference to US military assets in the region, which the regime has previously attacked.
The US president’s threat to attack Iran came days after he met Binyamin Netanyahu in Florida, where the Israeli prime minister reportedly raised the possibility of launching further strikes on Iran to destroy its nuclear programme. Last year the US and Israel attacked Iran in a 12-day war that ended with a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Saturday that “rioters must be put in their place”. In remarks aired on state television, Khamenei said: “We talk to protesters, the officials must talk to them. But there is no benefit to talking to rioters. Rioters must be put in their place.”
He also reiterated claims made often by the regime that foreign powers were behind the protests. “A bunch of people incited or hired by the enemy are getting behind the tradesmen and shopkeepers and chanting slogans against Islam and Iran.”
On Friday, Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, a Kurdish rights group, said that ten had been killed.
There were more deaths overnight into Saturday, with a grenade explosion in the town of Qom killing a man, according to the state-owned IRAN newspaper, and another death in the town of Harsin. There have now been demonstrations in more than 100 locations in 22 of Iran’s 31 provinces, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said.
Traders shut up their shops and took to the streets in Tehran on December 29
FARS NEWS AGENCY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The rallies, which began a week ago, are the biggest since the Women, Life, Freedom protests that started in 2022 after a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, was killed in the custody of the “morality police”. During the demonstrations, which lasted for months, more than 500 people were killed and 22,000 were detained.
The latest protests have been sparked by an economic crisis. Since the short-lived war with Israel and the US last summer, the Iranian rial has lost 56 per cent of its value against the dollar. Last month inflation rose to 42 per cent. The price of basic goods has soared by more than two thirds, according to official data.
• A collapsing currency has left the Iranian regime on the brink
Iranians have for years fought a growing struggle against poverty. As the rial’s value falls, salaries shrink and savings disappear. Many who once thought of themselves as middle class now struggle to make ends meet.
While the regime blames western sanctions for the country’s financial woes, experts say that corruption and mismanagement are also to blame.
Last week, shopkeepers in Tehran pulled down their shutters and took to the streets to strike in protest at the economic crisis. The protest then quickly turned political.
The most recent protests were started by shopkeepers in Tehran
MAJID ASGARIPOUR/WANA/REUTERS
Demonstrators who had initially chanted slogans against rising prices were soon calling for “death to the dictator”. Others chanted: “This homeland won’t be a homeland until the clerics are wrapped in [funeral] shrouds.”
The bazaars have long been seen as part of the regime’s backbone. In previous protests sparked by economic hardship, in 2017 and 2019, shopkeepers did not take part en masse. In 2022, however, they held strikes across the country as part of the Women, Life, Freedom demonstrations.
“The bazaar in Iran has been very close to religious institutions, and it played a major role in financing the 1979 revolution and bringing [the regime] to power,” said Sadeghi. “After the revolution, the bazaar’s ties to the government became even tighter. And in all these years, you see many events in the country — and the bazaar shows no reaction.”
• Inside Iran protests that threaten regime: ‘This is the final battle’
This time, however, they were the catalyst. Within five days, demonstrations had spread to at least 72 towns and cities. By Tuesday, the movement had reached university campuses from Tehran to Isfahan and Yazd.
On December 30, in Hamedan in western Iran, a video published online showed two young protesters— a man and a woman — standing with their arms wide in front of riot police. In another clip, a young man stood facing a water cannon. One protester joined him, then another. The line grew as they stood in the cold and waited for whatever came next.
An anti-US mural on a street in Tehran
ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH/EPA
In several cities, protesters attacked symbols of the regime and religious institutions, including seminaries and police stations. On Friday, middle-class protesters in Tehran began joining the crowds.
Farzaneh, a 40-year-old housewife from central Tehran who joined in the protests last week, said: “My husband is a senior civil engineer but the economy has got so bad that we can only afford eggs, potatoes and yoghurt. Even for those basics, we’re using credit. So many simple, essential things have been cut from our lives.”
While its security forces kill protesters, the regime has publicly tried to calm the tensions. On the second day of the demonstrations, President Pezeshkian appealed for unity and dialogue, and the central bank governor resigned. Yet still, the protests continue to grow.
Toomaj Salehi, a popular rap and hip-hop artist who was sentenced to death during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests and spent nearly two years in prison — much of it in solitary confinement — said the latest unrest was “completely predictable”.
What is happening now, he said, echoes earlier waves of protest: “Like in 2017 and 2019, it starts with economic pressure and quickly becomes political.” It can become less a plea for change than a rejection of the republic itself.
“Iran, just considering its oil and gas, is among the richest countries in the world,” Salehi added. “And yet most people are constantly struggling just to stay above the poverty line.”
Additional reporting by Louise Callaghan