Everything We Know About the Protests in Iran Amid the Ongoing Internet Blackout

Since late December, Iranians of all ages, classes, and provinces have flooded the streets each night to protest the government over allowing the economy to go to absolute shit. Tensions have escalated over the past week, with hundreds of protesters reported dead (including at least nine children) and the government shutting down the internet—ensuring its people are cut off from the world, as well as each other.

Iran’s Ayatollah is blaming the U.S. and Israel for the unrest, Iran’s foreign minister is justifying the crackdown against protesters by pointing to ICE, and Trump—suddenly concerned about the well-being of people protesting their government—is threatening military action if Iran keeps killing its citizens. And while it’s definitely the largest protest since the feminist uprising in 2022, some scholars are also categorizing this moment as the most significant challenge to the current regime since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

“I am tired and exhausted by the fools and idiots that get to govern us,” one protester identified only as a tech entrepreneur told the New York Times. “I am tired of their theft, corruption and injustice.”

Here’s everything we know (since the internet remains shut down) and everything to know about the dizzying convergence of events that brought Iranians to another potentially revolutionary moment.

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How did Iranians get here?

The short answer: Iranians are sick and tired of not having money because of their government’s failures. The slightly longer answer: Between widespread corruption and criminal mismanagement within the government, as well as mounting international sanctions that have completely crippled how the government can respond to rising prices, inflation has been rampant and devastating. By the end of 2025, food prices soared 72 percent higher than the year before, with staples like cooking oil and chicken becoming unaffordable to many citizens.

Then, on Dec. 28, the Iranian rial collapsed to an all-time low against the U.S. dollar (after already losing two-thirds of its value in just the last three years). Shopkeepers in Tehran’s bazaars—already sick of battling prices that were changing daily due to the failing currency—closed their shops and launched a demonstration. But across Iran, young people can’t find jobs, the elderly can’t afford anything, and many have lost their life savings, so the small demonstration spread across all of Iran’s 31 provinces, quickly morphing into massive protests.

On Jan. 5, the government attempted to ease the rising unrest by offering Iranians $7 a month…which did not go over well, given that the average Iranian spends around $200 a month on basic food and necessities.

“We are marching in thousands tonight. I saw children on the shoulders of their parents, a grandmother chanting ‘Death to [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei’ while she’s decked up in a chador [black robe],” a 19-year-old protester told the Guardian on Friday. “Do you realise how significant this is?”

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How significant is it?

Iran is no stranger to its people protesting an oppressive regime—Iranians protested against economic instability in 2017, and gas price hikes in 2019. There were also huge protests in 2009 over election results, as well as the feminist uprising in 2022, after Mahsa Amini was arrested by the morality police for wearing her hijab wrong, and then died in police custody. During those protests, women chopped their hair and burned their hijabs in massive bonfires; journalists were arrested and detained; some demonstrators were given the death penalty, and the morality police were soon disbanded—though they were reinstated one year later under a different name and continue to enforce the hijab rule.

But the current unrest stands apart for a few different reasons.

For starters, as mentioned above, the failing economy has affected most of the country. Over the weekend, a panel of Iranian scholars speaking on Al Jazeera discussed how this protest is essentially everyone everywhere—young and old, lower, middle, and upper-class, religious and progressives, and taking place in towns and villages usually considered extremely loyal to the Khamenei regime.

However, one of the panelists noted that this also means there’s no single organized opposition. “What we’re seeing is a cross-national and cross-generational alliance of people who simply [are] fed up with domestic and political circumstances and with their current predicament,” Mehran Kamrava, Head of Iranian studies at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, said. “Are they united in a vision of the future of Iran? That’s an open question, and I think the answer so far is no.”

Further, the Iranian government is in an incredibly weakened and vulnerable state. During the 12-day war in June—in which the U.S. bombed three of Iran’s nuclear sites—Israel attacked several Iranian cities, including universities and government buildings in Tehran, and Evin prison. The attacks killed at least 20 of the regime’s senior officials, including the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards and the country’s highest-ranking military officer; 16 scientists were also killed, including nine of the country’s top nuclear scientists.

In September, the United Nations re-imposed sanctions due to the country’s nuclear program, with the Associated Press reporting that the decision was “further squeezing the Islamic Republic as its people increasingly find themselves priced out of the food they need to survive and worried about their futures.” Iran also lost one of its strongest regional allies when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was ousted in December 2024, making the regime even more vulnerable.

Finally, the fact that the shopkeepers in Tehran—who sparked the Iranian revolution—were the ones to spark this wave of protests is notable. “For more than 100 years of Iranian history, bazaaris have been key actors in all of Iran’s major political movements,” Arang Keshavarzian, a professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at New York University, told CNN. “Many observers do believe that the bazaaris are some of the most loyal to the Islamic Republic.”

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How many protesters have been killed?

Numbers have varied since it’s difficult to get information, but Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), a monitoring group based in Norway, reported on Monday that at least 648 protesters have been killed, in addition to the thousands who have been injured since the protests began in December. State media reports that over 100 security personnel have also died in clashes with protesters. More than 10,000 have been arrested, and last week, the regime began threatening demonstrators with the death penalty.

On Thursday, the government shut down the internet and cut phone lines. Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites—which served as a lifeline during the 2022 protests—have also been jammed. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Iranian forces are now searching for Starlink dishes to confiscate to prevent more protest videos from going viral.

So rights groups are estimating that the death toll could be much higher, since it’s incredibly difficult to verify and/or obtain any information due to the blackout. During the two weeks before that, a few dozen protesters were estimated to have been killed.

Feminist activist Fatemeh Shams, an associate professor of Persian literature at the University of Pennsylvania who’s been an Iranian exile since 2009, spoke with the New Yorker over the weekend, saying: “In 2019, when they shut down the internet, more than fifteen hundred people were killed.”

Various videos emerged over the weekend showing body bags and stretchers stacked outside of makeshift morgues and medical centers, the bags unzipped so desperate friends and families could try to identify their missing loved ones. Due to the internet shutdown, every major news outlet noted that they could not identify or pinpoint when exactly these videos were taken.

CNN reported on Sunday that, among the killed protesters (very few of whom have been identified) was a 23-year-old college student, a 42-year-old hospital worker and father of three, and a 39-year-old athlete and two-time champion bodybuilder—all of whom were reported to have been shot in the head.

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And the Iranian leaders are saying…?

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has accused protesters of being backed by the U.S. and Israel. In a televised address on Friday, he called the protesters “saboteurs,” “vandals,” and said the government “would not back down.” The 86-year-old also called out Trump’s involvement in the 12-day war, saying his hands were “stained with the blood of more than a thousand Iranians.” He then tweeted warnings at the U.S. in what appears to be Google-translated Russian.

The country’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who was elected in 2024 and is considered a moderate, previously said he’s “ready to listen” to protesters, understands why shopkeepers are so angry, and in early January, warned against looking to “America or anyone else to blame.” But his tune changed over the weekend, in which he also suggested that protesters were actually rioters being backed by the U.S. and Israel. “They have trained some people inside and outside the country; they have bought in some terrorists from outside,” Pezeshkian said in a televised address on Sunday, claiming these “terrorists” were burning mosques and cultural sites. He further vowed “not to let rioters destabilize the country.”

But it’s Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, who delivered the most surreal soundbite. Speaking at a book event at the Crowne Plaza in Beirut to promote his memoir The Power of Negotiation, Araghchi pointed to the recent ICE killing in the U.S. as a reason to both brush off and justify his own government’s deadly oppression.

“Trump has deployed the national guard in his own country. We saw how border police [ICE] killed a woman,” he said. “But if Iran does this, if even a single bullet is fired, that people want to come rescue them.” He then proceeded to sign copies of his book, according to the Guardian.

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So how is the U.S. involved?

First, a very quick history lesson in less than 113 words: In 1951, Iran’s parliament appointed Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who committed the cardinal sin of nationalizing the country’s British-controlled oil. In response, the U.S. and U.K. orchestrated a CIA- and MI6-backed coup in 1953, overthrowing him and reinstalling Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Backed by Western governments, the Shah ruled as an authoritarian monarch for decades, violently suppressing dissent. That repression erupted into the 1979 Iranian Revolution, overthrowing the Western-installed monarchy with the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran, governed by Shia Islamic law and led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. After his death in 1989, Khamenei took over, continuing a regime shaped in no small part by decades of foreign, oil-driven intervention.

Fast forward to today: Trump, who doesn’t care much for people killed by government forces here in the U.S. (long as they’re not Trump supporters), is now tap dancing around military action against Iran for cracking down against protesters. During his meeting with oil executives on Friday, in which he flaunted a ballroom that doesn’t yet exist, Trump said, “I tell the Iranian leaders: You better not start shooting, because we’ll start shooting, too.” Then, on Sunday night, reporters aboard Air Force One asked Trump if Iran had crossed a red line that weekend. “It looks like it,” he said. “There seems to be some people killed who weren’t supposed to be killed.” He also told reporters Iran called him on Saturday to negotiate.

Previously, Iranian officials said U.S. military bases and Israel would both be targets if the U.S. decided to attack. In response to Trump’s latest comments, Araghchi told Al Jazeera he’s been speaking with U.S envoy Steve Witkoff, but that “Washington’s proposed ideas and threats against our country are incompatible.” Propaganda Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Iran’s private messages are different than their public statements.

Trump announced on Monday that any country that continues to do business with Iran—which would include China, India, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, and Turkey—will face a 25 percent tariff from the U.S. China is very unhappy about this.

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On Monday, tens of thousands of Iranians attended a pro-government rally in broad daylight, of which plenty of footage was readily available.

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