On this body seize from footage circulating on social media from Iran confirmed protesters as soon as once more taking to the streets of Tehran regardless of an intensifying crackdown because the Islamic Republic stays minimize off from the remainder of the world in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Jan. 10. AP-Yonhap
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Nationwide protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic’s ailing economic system are placing new stress on its theocracy because it has shut down the web and phone networks.
Tehran continues to be reeling from a 12-day battle launched by Israel in June that noticed the USA bomb nuclear websites in Iran. Financial stress, which has intensified since September when the United Nations reimposed sanctions on the nation over its atomic program, has despatched Iran’s rial forex right into a free fall, now buying and selling at over 1.4 million to $1.
In the meantime, Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance” — a coalition of nations and militant teams backed by Tehran — has been decimated for the reason that begin of the Israel-Hamas battle in 2023.
A menace by U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran that if Tehran “violently kills peaceable protesters” the U.S. “will come to their rescue,” has taken on new that means after American troops captured Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran.
“We’re watching it very carefully,” Trump has warned. “If they begin killing individuals like they’ve previously, I believe they will get hit very arduous by the USA.”
A shopkeeper arranges meals oil bottles at his grocery retailer in northern Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Jan. 6. AP-Yonhap
Here is what to know concerning the protests and the challenges going through Iran’s authorities.
Greater than 570 protests have taken place throughout all of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists Information Company reported early Sunday. The demise toll had reached not less than 116, it mentioned, with greater than 2,600 arrests. The group depends on an activist community inside Iran for its reporting and has been correct in previous unrest.
Understanding the dimensions of the protests has been tough. Iranian state media has offered little details about the demonstrations. On-line movies provide solely temporary, shaky glimpses of individuals within the streets or the sound of gunfire. Journalists usually in Iran additionally face limits on reporting equivalent to requiring permission to journey across the nation, in addition to the specter of harassment or arrest by authorities. The web shutdown has additional sophisticated the state of affairs.
However the protests don’t look like stopping, even after Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei mentioned “rioters should be put of their place.”
The collapse of the rial has led to a widening financial disaster in Iran. Costs are up on meat, rice and different staples of the Iranian dinner desk. The nation has been scuffling with an annual inflation fee of some 40 p.c.
Automobiles drive previous banners containing anti-U.S. and anti-Israel pictures, left, and portraits of the Iranian armed forces commanders and nuclear scientists who had been killed in Israeli strikes in June 2025, on the Felestin (Palestine) Sq. in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Jan. 4. AP-Yonhap
In December, Iran launched a brand new pricing tier for its nationally sponsored gasoline, elevating the value of among the world’s most cost-effective gasoline and additional pressuring the inhabitants. Tehran could search steeper worth will increase sooner or later, as the federal government now will evaluation costs each three months. In the meantime, meals costs are anticipated to spike after Iran’s Central Financial institution in current days ended a preferential, sponsored dollar-rial alternate fee for all merchandise besides medication and wheat.
The protests started in late December with retailers in Tehran earlier than spreading. Whereas initially centered on financial points, the demonstrations quickly noticed protesters chanting anti-government statements as nicely. Anger has been simmering over time, notably after the 2022 demise of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody that triggered nationwide demonstrations.
Some have chanted in help of Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who has referred to as for protests.
Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” which grew in prominence within the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is reeling.
Israel has crushed Hamas within the devastating battle within the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, has seen its high management killed by Israel and has been struggling since. A lightning offensive in December 2024 overthrew Iran’s longtime stalwart ally and consumer in Syria, President Bashar Assad, after years of battle there. Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels even have been pounded by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes.
China in the meantime has remained a significant purchaser of Iranian crude oil, however hasn’t offered overt army help. Neither has Russia, which has relied on Iranian drones in its battle on Ukraine.
Iran has insisted for many years that its nuclear program is peaceable. Nonetheless, its officers have more and more threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran had been enriching uranium to close weapons-grade ranges earlier than the U.S. assault in June, making it the one nation on the earth with out a nuclear weapons program to take action.
Tehran additionally more and more in the reduction of its cooperation with the Worldwide Atomic Vitality Company, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, as tensions elevated over its nuclear program in recent times. The IAEA’s director-general has warned Iran may construct as many as 10 nuclear bombs, ought to it determine to weaponize its program.
U.S. intelligence companies have assessed that Iran has but to start a weapons program, however has “undertaken actions that higher place it to provide a nuclear machine, if it chooses to take action.”
Iran lately mentioned it was now not enriching uranium at any website within the nation, making an attempt to sign to the West that it stays open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. However there’s been no vital talks within the months for the reason that June battle.
Iran many years in the past was one of many United States’ high allies within the Mideast beneath Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who bought American army weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.
However in January 1979, the shah fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled in opposition to his rule. Then got here the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran’s theocratic authorities.
Later that 12 months, college college students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, looking for the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage disaster that noticed diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed.
In the course of the Iran-Iraq battle of the Nineteen Eighties, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein. Throughout that battle, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea as a part of the so-called “Tanker Battle,” and later shot down an Iranian business airliner that the U.S. army mentioned it mistook for a warplane.
Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy within the years since. Relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal, which noticed Iran vastly restrict its program in alternate for the lifting of sanctions. However Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions within the Mideast that intensified after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel.
