Cartoon by Adam Zyglis

How Iran’s regime retook the streets

Mehul Srivastava and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in London

Financial Times: The images that trickled out of Iran showed a country gripped by chaos: tens if not hundreds of thousands of protesters; body bags laid outside morgues; gunfire ringing in the streets.

The unrest appeared last week to have such momentum that the Islamic republic’s foes speculated that the regime was near collapse and its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was plotting an Assad-style escape.

But just days later, Iranians reached over sputtering phone lines and secret satellite internet connections, along with international observers, say the protests appear to have faded.

With little reliable information escaping Iran’s internet curbs, and misinformation flooding into the gap, establishing exactly what happened across a nation of 90mn is nearly impossible.

But in phone interviews, smuggled messages from encrypted communications set up by activists and stark testimonies collected by human rights activists, a bleak picture is emerging.

They depict a bitter national convulsion as protesters, armed agitators and the authoritarian government’s security forces battled each other for control of the streets. They provide some details of a violent, far-reaching response by the regime, an unprecedented crackdown that could prove akin to the Islamic republic’s own Tiananmen Square moment.

They also show a precarious moment of great anticipation, “that the US and Israel will be taking some sort of action”, said one resident.

The protests were rooted in economic anguish, starting in late December as traders in central Tehran closed their shops in anger at the Iranian currency’s precipitous collapse and high inflation.

But they quickly spiralled into a much broader movement against the regime itself, with chants of “death to Khamenei” and “death to the dictator” echoing in towns and cities around the country.

The regime’s initial response — at least by its own brutal standards — appeared restrained, as officials sought to appease the demonstrators’ economic concerns.

“In the first few days, the numbers were growing, but there wasn’t an atmosphere of fear,” said one history professor, speaking through a Starlink connection. After the government asked colleges and universities to cancel classes in early January, the professor’s students joined the protests.

“I did not see any violence — not from our side, not from the government,” they said.

That changed at 8pm on Thursday January 8, when mass crowds appeared to flood the streets in response to a call by Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the Shah deposed in the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic republic to power.

Immediately, the regime cut off the internet and international phone calls. With Iranians isolated from the outside world, the crackdown began, according to witnesses, videos leaked online and human rights groups.

Amnesty International said security forces used residential buildings, mosques and police stations to fire live ammunition at unarmed protesters, “targeting . . . their heads and torsos”. Three people, all speaking via voice notes shared by internet freedom activists, corroborated that account.

“You could hear gunshots at night, people screaming in fear,” said one woman, who said she scurried home soon after sunset and refused to let her daughter out on the streets >>>