Iranian leader vows regime ‘won’t back down’, says vandals trying to please Trump as internet blackout continues

Thousands of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran and other cities Thursday evening, heeding the call of the country’s exiled crown prince to make their voices heard in the most serious challenge to the Islamic Republic’s extremist leaders in many years.

THE protests spread across the country for 12 daysleaving around 40 people dead and more than 2,000 people arrested by security forces, but despite the arrests and a nationwide internet and phone outage, the unrest escalated dramatically on Thursday evening.

It was impossible to have a precise idea of ​​the extent of the unrest, given the repression exercised on the circulation of information. But the Iranian leader appeared in a brief televised address Friday morning, defiantly accusing President Trump of inspiring the protests, showing he remained in charge and vowing his regime “would not back down.”

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, called for unity and accused “a gang of vandals” in Tehran, where a state television building was set on fire, of having “destroyed a building that belongs to them to please the American president.”

As he spoke, an audience in front of him shouted the familiar refrain of “Death to America!” »

Given the communications blackout that continued Friday morning according to NetBlocks Short videos posted online, largely by anti-regime activists, have provided the only real window into the chaos across the country, according to the internet monitoring organization.

This situation appeared to intensify dramatically from 8 p.m. local time on Thursday, when exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi urged Iranians to shout and chant from their windows against the regime.

“Iranians demanded their freedom tonight,” said Pahlavi, the son of former head of state Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who fled the country just before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought the current regime to power.

In statements posted online, he called on European leaders to join Mr. Trump in “holding the regime to account,” using “all available technical, financial and diplomatic resources to restore communication with the Iranian people so that their voice and will can be heard and seen.” Do not let the voices of my courageous compatriots be silenced. »

Speaking at the White House on Friday, Mr. Trump reiterated, as he has in recent days, that he was open to some form of U.S. intervention in Iran, while asserting that it would not involve a U.S. incursion.

“I made it very clear that if they started killing people like they did in the past, we would get involved,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re going to hit them really hard where it hurts. And that doesn’t mean we have to stay down, but it means hit them really, really hard where it hurts. So we don’t want that to happen.”

On Friday, Pahlavi made a direct appeal to Mr. Trump.

“I called on people to take to the streets to fight for their freedom and to overwhelm the security forces with numbers. That is what they did last night. Your threat against this criminal regime has also kept the regime’s thugs at bay. But time is running out. People will be on the streets again in an hour. I ask you to help me,” Pahlavi said on social media. “You have proven and I know that you are a man of peace and a man of your word. Be prepared to step in to help the Iranian people.”

Pahlavi had made his first call a few days earlier for mass chants against the regime at 8 p.m., or noon on the US east coast, on Thursday and Friday.

In the videos, which are difficult to independently verify, many people could be heard chanting “Death to the dictator!” and “Death to the Islamic Republic”, while others called for the return of the monarchy, declaring: “Pahlavi will return!”

On Thursday, the US news agency Human Rights Activists, which relies on a network of contacts inside the country, said at least 42 people had been killed and more than 2,270 others arrested, but that was before a clear picture of the chaos of Thursday evening and Friday morning could be obtained.

“All the huge crowds in my neighborhood are pro-Pahlavi, and in several areas my sources report the same thing: pro-Pahlavi crowds predominate, undeniably,” a source in Tehran told CBS News on Thursday evening, calling it “monarchists responding to Reza,” before his communications were cut off.

“For the first time, the government decided to shut down the Internet yesterday, and usually when they shut down the Internet, it means they are going to resort to violence against people,” Maziar Bahari, editor-in-chief of the independent news site IranWire, told CBS News on Friday.

Bahari said activists and journalists outside Iran had heard reports that security forces had shot people in different parts of the country, but those reports were impossible to verify. Other CBS News sources, both inside the country and in contact with family in Iran, said there did not appear to have been massive, widespread violence Thursday evening, but they stressed that it was difficult to get a clear picture amid the communications blackouts.

“Even Starlink, which was the main line of communication for some activists in different parts of the country, has been jammed,” Bahari said, referring to the satellite communications system run by Elon Musk.

CBS News reached out for comment from SpaceX, which manages Starlink, but got no immediate response.

Bahari said this would likely result in “the incarceration of hundreds, if not thousands, of protesters.” This would lead to the torture and interrogation of thousands of protesters, or even their murder.

How could Iran react?

“A lot of people have called what’s happening now in Iran a revolution, and we can see different signs of revolution in Iran right now, but a revolution usually needs a leader for the revolution… We don’t have that leader,” said Bahari, who was working as a journalist in Iran in 2009 when a previous round of massive protests swept the country. He was arrested and detained for more than 100 days.

He said he expects the protests to continue regardless of what steps the regime takes to suppress, which he said could vary widely depending on the whims of local and regional commanders.

“I think people are more desperate than before. In 2009, the economic situation was not as bad as it is today,” Bahari said. “In 2009, the demonstrations focused mainly on the dignity and rights of citizens. In 2022, the “woman’s freedom of life” [movement] focused primarily on the right of women to determine their own destiny. But I think these protests are about the economic situation, but also about dignity. It’s about national pride. And because of that, these protests will be very, very difficult to contain. »

“I was very fortunate to be a journalist for a foreign publication at that time…and because of that, I was not treated the same as unknown prisoners,” Bahari told CBS News.

But despite his status as a “VIP prisoner,” Bahari said he was “physically tortured. I was psychologically tortured. I was threatened with execution. And I know for a fact that many protesters in 2009 who were arrested with me and who did not have my profile, were treated much harsher by prison guards in different parts of the country.”

“The Iranian people do not lack courage. They lack leadership to oppose the government,” Bahari said. “But at the same time, a lot of protesters have nothing to lose. Their suicide rate over the last two decades in Iran is very high. And when you’re suicidal, when you have nothing to lose, you don’t care what might happen to you at a protest. So you go out and demand your rights.”

Echoing Khamenei, Iranian state-controlled media on Friday accused “terrorist agents” from the United States and Israel of being behind the violence. He recognized the victims, but gave no details.

The protests began Dec. 28 as Tehran merchants closed their shops and took to the streets to express anger at Iran’s struggling economy, hobbled for years by global isolation and a series of sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries over its nuclear program and support for mandated armed groups in the region.

Iran’s autocratic regime has violently suppressed several previous waves of unrest, and the source in Tehran told CBS News that many people fear the current protests could lead to a similar draconian crackdown.

This time, however, the protests are taking place under the threat of direct US intervention from President Trump.

“I let them know that if they start killing people, which they tend to do in their riots — they have a lot of riots — if they do that, we’re going to hit them very hard,” Mr. Trump said Thursday in a radio interview.

Vice President JD Vance told reporters at the White House that the United States stands with anyone participating in peaceful protests in Iran. Asked whether the United States would join, as it did over the summer, in further Israeli strikes against Iran, Vance called on Tehran to negotiate with Washington over its nuclear program, but said he would “let the president talk about what we’re going to do going forward.”

Bahari said Iranian officials told him they were worried about the possibility of Mr. Trump’s intervention in Iran even before these protests.

The recent US attack on Venezuela “really frightened many Iranian officials and may have affected their actions in terms of how they deal with the protesters.” But at the same time, it has inspired many protesters to come out, because they know that the leader of the world’s leading superpower supports their cause.