What I Saw in Mashhad
On January 9, anti-regime protests gripped Iran, and President Trump declared that the northeastern city of Mashhad had “fallen” to the opposition.
I happened to be in Mashhad from December 26 to January 14. What I witnessed in those weeks was far more complex—certainly more complex than the American president’s pronouncement, but also than the narratives originating either with state propaganda or opposition media.
Mashhad has never felt foreign to me. I come from Herat, in the west of Afghanistan, which is part of the same historic region of Persia. For me and millions of my compatriots, Mashhad is a cultural, linguistic, and emotional center that feels very much like home.
This trip was for the research institute I direct, the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies. In preparation for our international conference, I was there to discuss developments in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan with representatives of the Iranian government, think tanks, and universities. Part of my mission was also to reach out to the Afghan diaspora.
Mashhad is Iran’s second-largest city and the spiritual capital of the Islamic Republic. It encompasses the burial place of Shiite Islam’s eighth imam, Imam Reza. It also houses the tomb of Ferdowsi, the epic poet who preserved the Persian language and imagination through the “Shahnameh,” and is the hometown of the current supreme leader. For these reasons and others, what happens in Mashhad reverberates across Iran, perhaps second only to events in Tehran itself.
The protests began in Mashhad in mid-December, and they appeared to be an expression of economic grievance. The government had enacted reforms that triggered a sudden spike in the prices of basic commodities and placed immense pressure on ordinary households. Official figures already suggested that nearly 30 percent of Iranians lived below the poverty line. The Iranian president, a heart surgeon by training, framed the painful new measures as a necessary “surgery” on an ailing economy—an attempt to excise corruption and restore the patient’s long-term health. Iranian media abounded with debates among economists and market analysts, weighing the costs and benefits of the reforms.
The news media reported merchants’ strikes in several cities—most notably in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar—and scattered political protests alongside them. The official channels emphasized a distinction between economic-driven, “legitimate” protests and “opportunistic,” externally organized, anti-regime riots. The president’s spokesperson referred to all protesters as her “grieving children,” insisting that they must be heard rather than suppressed.
In Mashhad during these early days, I encountered some small protests in relatively affluent areas, such as along Ahmad Abad Street and Vakil Abad Boulevard. Young people, their faces covered by masks, circulated through traffic and on sidewalks, chanting political slogans. They easily could have been mistaken for agitated sports fans, and their actions were small and diffuse enough that they could be quickly dispersed. On January 6, I saw a gathering of several dozen merchants in the commercial district of Bazaar Reza. These protests were modest in scale and short-lived, befitting a spontaneous expression of frustration rather than a national rebellion.
The situation escalated dramatically on the evening of January 8. Former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi issued a video calling for nationwide protests at 8 p.m. local time. This message coincided with provocative posts from U.S. officials, including one by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who insinuated that Mossad agents were interspersed among the demonstrators. By about 6 p.m., internet access and all mobile and landline services had been shut down. At first, the shutdown was strangely liberating: I would find out what was happening by speaking to and watching real people, rather than through the filters of partisan news agencies and social media.
[Read: How doubt became a weapon in Iran]
From my room I could hear occasional gunshots echoing across the city. Just after midnight, a friend and I drove to Ahmad Abad Street and then to Vakil Abad Boulevard. The scenes were startling: burning buses and cars, destroyed footbridges, and shattered traffic lights. My friend told me that protests had also raged in working-class areas along Tabarsi Boulevard, on the other side of the city, and in the suburbs of Sakhtaman and Sayedi. So we drove to Tabarsi Boulevard too, and saw even more severe damage—public buildings vandalized, streets littered with debris. The protesters, however, were gone. Riot police still patrolled these areas on motorbikes, and the city’s fire brigade and municipal workers were out cleaning streets and extinguishing fires. We didn’t see or hear any ambulances.
The next day was Friday, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave a stern speech in Tehran, warning that the regime would no longer tolerate “agitators.” The state media abruptly changed the tenor of its coverage: What it earlier described as a social and economic crisis was now termed an armed insurrection. Protesters were now terrorists, Islamic State affiliates, and American or Zionist agents.
Mashhad was tense but calm during the day. Everyone I spoke with anticipated renewed unrest at 8 p.m., again in response to Pahlavi’s call. At about 2 a.m. on Saturday, I went back to Ahmad Abad, Vakil Abad, and Tabarsi. The streets were completely deserted—even the riot police and municipal workers were gone—and the scale of the destruction was even more shocking than it had been the previous night.
That day, Trump claimed that more than a million people were demonstrating in Mashhad and that the city had fallen under protesters’ control. His second claim was partially accurate, insofar as riot police and plainclothes security forces, very much in evidence the night before, did appear to have temporarily withdrawn. But the first claim, about the number of the protesters, seemed to me highly implausible. I visited four of what I’m told were about 10 protest locations around the city (the remaining ones were located in nearby neighborhoods). These were confined areas, and the protests within them lasted no more than three to five hours. To imagine tens of thousands of protesters in these urban pockets is already a stretch, and far shy of a million. This does not negate the existence of hundreds of thousands of angry and disillusioned Mashhadis, but anger does not automatically translate into street mobilization.
On Saturday, January 10, the city was quiet. Security forces were far more visible than during past days of protests—and more heavily armed. The riot police I’d seen on Thursday night had shotguns; now I saw some carrying AK-47s and even heavy machine guns. From Thursday onward, long queues formed outside bakeries, pharmacies, and grocery stores as people prepared for the worst. Pahlavi shifted his call to action from 8 p.m. to 6 p.m., and starting in the early afternoon, entire neighborhoods emptied, resembling the eerie calm of COVID lockdowns. That night, the protests were reportedly smaller and less violent.
The state organized pro-government demonstrations throughout the country for Monday, January 12. In Mashhad, these took place near the Imam Reza Shrine—the city’s focal monument and a center of pilgrimage and religious observance—during daylight hours. I happened to be visiting a museum within the shrine complex when thousands of people surged onto Imam Reza Boulevard. Pilgrims, tourists, and demonstrators were swept up together in the crowd. The event included a public burial for 20 security personnel reportedly killed during the unrest. Unlike the anti-government protesters, who had reason to fear recognition and reprisal, those carrying pro-government placards showed their faces. Still, uncertainty, bewilderment, and fear were palpable.
That day marked the beginning of a new phase. Life in Mashhad gradually returned to normal, with the so-called national internet (not connected to the outside world) and phone services partially restored. The opposition media and some of my local contacts began reporting mass casualties and mass arrests. I asked my Mashhadi acquaintances if they personally knew people who had been killed or injured: Two-thirds said they did. The city’s Rezvan cemetery and morgue were set aside for the victims, and three people I knew who went there told me that they saw hundreds of bodies awaiting identification. A few days later, state media quoted a senior security official who acknowledged that about 400 people had been killed in Mashhad and nearby towns, but asserted that 80 percent of them had been “martyred” by anti-regime elements. So many people had been arrested that a major police station was allocated for families seeking missing relatives.
[Read: The online world where Iranians were free]
Because of the limitations that remained on outside communication and the internet, most of us in Mashhad were still getting our information from state media, opposition satellite channels, and word of mouth. In the days following January 12, state media assured viewers that order had been restored to Iranian cities after an outburst of “anti-Islamic” unrest. The opposition outlets—most notably Iran International, a satellite channel based in London—reported that Iran was in the throes of a full-scale revolution, led by Reza Pahlavi, and that it was on the brink of victory. Both narratives seemed like exercises in cognitive dissonance for those of us on the ground.
Speculation about Iran’s future has since gone global. Four broad scenarios seem to hold sway. The first is stagnation under the continued rule of a supreme leader who is disinclined to bargain with protesters or foreign powers. The second is transformational reform from within, akin to China under Deng Xiaoping. The third is the eventual victory of a grassroots, nonviolent movement, as in East Germany, Poland, or South Africa. And the fourth is externally supported, violent regime change.
Each scenario has plausible foundations. The Islamic Republic has demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to project and absorb pain. Like many revolutionary regimes, it is more tolerant of violence—both inflicted and endured—than its opponents assume. And so this cycle of protest and repression, too, could pass.
But it is also true that for more than a century, popular movements in Iran have repeatedly sought more accountable governance. These groundswells have had some success. The Women, Life, Freedom movement of 2022 achieved a major cultural victory by effectively challenging the state’s enforcement of women’s dress codes. In Mashhad in January, I saw many young women in public without hijab, and they did not appear to face reprisals from either the government or the conservative segments of society. Khamenei is likely in his final years, and his succession could present a moment for transformative change from within. Some voices within the system have long called for this. Fatemeh Sepehri, a political prisoner from Mashhad, has openly advocated for removing the supreme leader and holding free elections to draft a new constitution.
The final scenario, violent regime change, has a precedent in the 1979 revolution. But unlike then, some of those calling for a revolution today are also pleading for American or Israeli intervention to help achieve it. Supporters of Pahlavi were particularly vocal in Mashhad this month, as attested by the prevalence of pro-monarchy graffiti on city walls, and the regime’s propaganda devoted particular attention to discrediting the former crown prince. During the state-orchestrated demonstration, Khamenei’s representative in Mashhad mocked Pahlavi by recalling how the shah, despite decades as “America’s puppet,” had been denied entry to the United States in the last days of his life.
Iranians can and will chart their country’s destiny. For the moment, however, the country is mourning its thousands of dead—their precise numbers, identities, and circumstances still unclear. Justice and accountability for these victims are not a peripheral issue; they are the foundation of any scenario for the future.
The scene at the Mashhad airport the day I left, January 14, was profoundly emotional. Only a small number of passengers had been fortunate enough to secure tickets for the day’s last flight to Istanbul. The departure lounge felt less like a transit space than a place of mourning. Passengers and their accompanying relatives wept openly. Not only grief but also anxiety infused the room, amid media reports of imminent U.S. military strikes that could usher in an uncertain and violent future.
As my plane ascended, I looked out at the light beams emanating from the Goharshad Mosque at the Imam Reza Shrine below. The historic region from which both Mashhad and Herat take their identity is Khorasan—literally, “where the sun rises.” I found this consoling in that moment, reminded of the dawn and its fragile but persistent promise.