Sarah felt like she had nothing left to lose. This 50-year-old businesswoman living in Tehran saw prices skyrocket while her freedoms were reduced every year.
So when protesters began gathering in Tehran’s upscale Andarzgoo neighborhood on Saturday night, he didn’t hesitate to join them. In a video sent to The Guardian Through his cousin, who lives abroad, you can see people walking down the street, happy, despite the halo of tear gas hanging over their heads.
The crowd was heterogeneous; families, elderly people and men walking side by side. The atmosphere was calm, until the security forces approached, raised their assault rifles and began shooting at the unarmed protesters at point-blank range.
The following video was sent in a hurry. “Scoundrels!” he repeated over and over again as he drove away, while in the background gunshots could be heard and people could be seen rushing past.
Iran plunged into darkness on Thursday. The authorities they cut off the internet and telephone calls abroad, which isolated the country from the rest of the world. The government’s rhetoric, conciliatory at first, changed quickly. Offers of dialogue turned into threats of the death penalty against the protesters, whom the Government accused of being backed by Israel and the United States.
What happened next was documented in blurry videos and panicked messages sent out of the country by activists who managed to take advantage of the momentary connection through Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites before the GPS service was blocked.
Thousands of people have marched across the country every night, chanting “death to the dictator,” in reference to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and calling for the return of the Pahlavi dynasty, which ruled Iran before the 1979 revolution.
A 19-year-old student activist said on Friday: “Tonight, thousands of us marched. I saw children on the shoulders of their parents, a grandmother in her chador chanting ‘death to Khamenei’. Do you realize how relevant this is?”
The protest movement, which began as a modest demonstration by merchants in Tehran against the sudden depreciation of the country’s currency on December 28, quickly escaped government control.
Authorities cut off the Internet and phone calls abroad, isolating the country from the rest of the world. The government’s rhetoric, conciliatory at first, changed quickly.
While Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian called for dialogue and warned that the government’s actions could cause an even greater increase in inflation, signs of repression by security forces began to appear.
On January 4, a video was released showing riot police storming a hospital treating injured protesters in the western province of Ilam, shocking Iranians outraged by the beating of patients and doctors.
At least 538 people have died in the violence surrounding the demonstrations, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, including 490 protesters. The group reported that Iranian authorities detained more than 10,600 people.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch previously documented that authorities killed at least 28 people between December 31 and January 3, some of them with rifles and slug guns.
Pezeshkian called for an investigation into the hospital raid and other alleged mistreatment by security forces and, unlike other Iranian officials, said the Iranian government was responsible for protesters’ complaints, not foreign powers.
His promises of accountability were not enough to satisfy the Iranians, and the crowds grew. They were outraged by the blatant use of force against demonstrations, a pattern already seen in previous protest movements in 2009, 2019 and 2022.
Soran, a protester from the western city of Kermanshah, said on Wednesday: “We have been watching government forces use maximum violence against us during crackdowns for decades and this time is no different. They are shooting everyone.”
From outside Iran, diaspora and opposition figures began to think that the protests were a real opportunity to overthrow the regime.
Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran, the dictator who was ousted during the 1979 revolution, called Thursday for unity protests. At 8 p.m., Iranians across the country were expected to chant slogans from their windows and rooftops, Pahvlavi claimed, adding that he would announce next steps based on the response on the ground to his call.
The Iranian authorities were waiting. At approximately the time Pahlavi appointed, they cut off the Internet. Despite the blackout, some videos showed crowds in the streets, many of them chanting slogans in support of the heir.
The security forces were on the street, waiting. They began to use force drastically while information came out in dribs and drabs.
Mahsa, a 28-year-old journalist from Mashhad, said on Thursday, before her phone connection was cut: “They are charging into the crowd with vans and motorcycles. I have seen them slowing down and deliberately shooting people in the face. There are many injured. The streets are full of blood. I am afraid I am about to witness a sea of corpses.”
As the streets of Iran erupted in protests, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi visited Beirut. On Friday night he went to the Crowne Plaza hotel to discuss and sign his memoir, The power of negotiation.
During the debate, he downplayed the protests and stated that, like in any other country, complaints about prices are sometimes expressed publicly.
“Trump has deployed the national guard in his own country. We saw how the border police [ICE] killed a woman. But if Iran does this, if a single bullet is fired, people want to come and rescue them,” he said, ending the debate to sign copies of the book.
Protesters in Iran reported the opposite. A protester who was in the Tajrish Arg neighborhood explained that snipers were shooting into the crowd and stated that he saw “hundreds of bodies” in the street.
From antithetical accounts
The image of Iran began to divide in two: during the day, state television and official government agencies projected an image of normality. They broadcast demonstrations in favor of the Government and images of people immersed in their daily activities in neighborhoods where there were no protests.
At night, however, videos of the protests, painstakingly disseminated by activists and shared with the Iranian diaspora, were leaked to the rest of the world. Videos showed thousands of people marching through the streets across the country despite what appeared to be gunfire from authorities.
It was difficult to discern the true magnitude of the protests, as few people could bypass the internet shutdown. Diaspora and opposition figures abroad amplified the few videos that emerged from the country, proclaiming that the end of the regime was near.
The few testimonies that came out of the country were heartbreaking. A protester in Tehran sent a message on Friday alleging that they had been beaten with sticks and that they had seen authorities firing live ammunition into the crowd. The death toll was “very high,” he said, before disconnecting again.
On Friday a video appeared of corpses lying on the floor of a Tehran hospitaland human rights groups stated that although they could not adequately document each death, they feared massacres had been committed.
A video of a large medical warehouse located outside a Makeshift morgue in the Kahrizak area of Tehranappeared on social media on Sunday. In the images, body bags were seen stacked inside and lined up in an adjacent patio.
Families gathered around televisions, which showed a sequence of disfigured faces. Women’s cries could be heard in the background as people lifted the black plastic tarps that covered the dead.
State television insisted that the body bags contained victims of the protesters, arguing that autopsies showed that the wounds were from stab weapons and not bullets.
News of the massacre reached Washington, where Donald Trump redoubled his threat to intervene militarily in Iran if the government killed protesters.
The American president he said on his platform Truth Social on Saturday night: “Iran is seeking FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The United States is ready to help! Media reports indicate that he was considering military options to attack Iran.
The external threat apparently hardened the Iranian authorities’ stance against protesters and fueled the narrative that the West is behind the protests. Police detained prominent figures of the protests, while the speaker of Parliament stated that he could attack the United States or Israel in the event of American military intervention.
The protests continued despite the repression, and on Sunday they stabilized. Protesters met in the streets and demonstrated protected at night.
A protester from Tehran declared: “With great difficulty, thousands of us managed to connect to the Internet so we could send you the news. We are fighting for a revolution, but we need help.”
