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People in Iran The capital shouted from their homes and gathered in the streets Thursday evening after a call from the exiled crown prince for a mass demonstration, witnesses said, a new escalation in protests that have spread nationwide across the Islamic Republic.
Access to the internet and phone lines in Iran was cut immediately after the protests began.
The protest represented the first test of whether Iranian public opinion could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose seriously ill father fled Iran just before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The demonstrations included cries of support for the Shah, which could have brought a death sentence in the past but now underscore the anger fueling protests that began against Iran’s struggling economy.
On Thursday, protests that took place on Wednesday in cities and rural villages across Iran continued. Other markets and bazaars closed their doors in support of the protesters. So far, violence around the protests has killed at least 39 people and more than 2,260 others have been arrested, the US news agency Human Rights Activists said.
The intensifying protests are increasing pressure on Iran’s civilian government and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. CloudFlare, an internet company, and advocacy group NetBlocks reported the internet outage, both attributing it to Iranian government interference. Attempts to connect landlines and cell phones from Dubai to Iran failed to connect. Such outages have in the past been followed by intense government crackdowns.
Meanwhile, the protests themselves remained largely leaderless. It remains unclear exactly what impact Pahlavi’s call will have on the upcoming protests.
“The lack of a viable alternative has undermined past protests in Iran,” wrote Nate Swanson of the Washington-based Atlantic Council, which studies Iran.
“There are perhaps a thousand Iranian dissident activists who, if given the opportunity, could become respected statesmen, as labor leader Lech Walesa did in Poland at the end of the Cold War. But until now, the Iranian security apparatus has arrested, persecuted and exiled all of the country’s potential transformational leaders.”
Thursday’s demonstrations
Pahlavi had called for demonstrations on Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m. local time (4:30 p.m. GMT). When the clock struck, Tehran neighborhoods erupted in chants, witnesses said. Chants included “Death to the dictator!” » and “Death to the Islamic Republic!” » Others praised the shah, shouting: “This is the last battle! Pahlavi will return!” Thousands of people were visible in the streets.
“Great Iranian nation, the eyes of the world are on you. Take to the streets and, as a united front, shout out your demands,” Pahlavi said in a statement. “I warn the Islamic Republic, its leader and the (Revolutionary Guards) that the world and (President Donald Trump) are watching you closely. The repression of the people will not go unanswered.”
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Pahlavi had said he would propose other projects depending on the response to his appeal. Its support for and from Israel has drawn criticism in the past – particularly after Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in June. Protesters have shouted in support of the Shah during some demonstrations, but it is unclear whether this is in support of Pahlavi himself or a desire to return to a time before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iranian authorities appeared to take the planned protests seriously. The radical newspaper Kayhan published a video online claiming that security forces would use drones to identify participants.
Iranian officials made no acknowledgment of the scale of the protests that raged in many places on Thursday, even before the 8 p.m. demonstration. However, there are reports of injuries or deaths of security officers.
The legal Mizan news agency reported that a police colonel was fatally stabbed in a town outside Tehran, while the semi-official Fars news agency said gunmen killed two members of the security forces and wounded 30 others in a shootout in the town of Lordegan, in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province.
A deputy governor of Iran’s Khorasan Razavi province told Iranian state television that an attack on a police station killed five people Wednesday evening in Chenaran, about 700 kilometers (430 miles) northeast of Tehran.
It remains unclear why the Iranian authorities have not yet cracked down more harshly on the protesters. Trump warned last week that if Tehran “violently killed peaceful protesters,” America would “come to their rescue.”
Trump’s comments prompted a fresh rebuke from Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
“Recalling the long history of criminal interventions by successive US administrations in Iran’s internal affairs, the Foreign Ministry considers statements of concern for the great Iranian nation to be hypocritical, aimed at deceiving public opinion and covering up the numerous crimes committed against Iranians,” he said.
But the comments did not stop the US State Department, on the social platform
“When prices are set so high that neither consumers can afford to buy nor farmers can afford to sell, everyone loses,” the State Department said in a message. “It makes no difference if this rice is thrown away.”
Meanwhile, Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi remains imprisoned by authorities following her arrest in December.
“Since December 28, 2025, the Iranian people have taken to the streets, just as they did in 2009 and 2019,” said his son Ali Rahmani. “Each time, the same demands came up: the end of the Islamic Republic, the end of this patriarchal, dictatorial and religious regime, the end of the clerics, the end of the regime of the mullahs.”
The biggest protests since the death of Mahsa Amini
Iran has faced a series of nationwide protests in recent years. As sanctions tightened and Iran struggled after the 12-day war, its currency, the rial, collapsed in December, reaching 1.4 million to the dollar. Protests began soon after, with demonstrators chanting against Iran’s theocracy.
Before Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979, the rial was generally stable, trading around 70 to the dollar. At the time of Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, $1 was exchanged for 32,000 rials. Stores in markets across the country have closed their doors as part of the protests.
