Protests have grown to million on the streets around Iran.
Credit: Multiple personal accounts from Iran on X
Is the Iranian Ayatollah’s regime about to fall? What was originally touted by the world’s press as ‘isolated protests against the cost of living’, are closing in on the doorstep of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran. Unconfirmed rumours are abound that the Ayatollah has already fled to Moscow.
Those protest marches have grown exponentially in recent days, with security forces and government workers, and even some clerics abandoning their positions around the country to join the uprising as night after night the crowds on the streets the cries of the crowds has become louder and louder, “Javid Shah!” (or “Long live the Shah!”), as well as “Pahlevi volverá” (bring back the monarchy) in a call for the return of the Shah of Iran. The Internet and land lines in Iran have been cut, although Starlink have opened free web based communications covering the entirety of Iranian skies.
The Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, next in line to become the Shah (or king) is said to be poised to take his role. Although uninvolved directly with the protests, he has encouraged the protestors to continue building numbers until the government is brought down. “We will not allow a power vacuum follow the collapse of this regime,” he said. Former Central Bank governor Mohammad Reza Farzin resigned on December 29, 2025, amid the turmoil and the spiralling value of the Iranian rial.
What are the protests really about?
With government buildings being the target of firebombings, and the massive rise in those joining the protests every day, are the protests just about the cost of living? In 2024 alone, the Iranian regime was reported for a litany of human rights abuses against its own people including:
- Hundreds of executions, often following forced confessions under torture and unfair trials; many for offences not meeting international standards for the “most serious crimes,” including juvenile offenders.
- Credible reports of torture, including new violent enforcement of women’s mandatory dress code (hijab) restrictions.
- Ongoing abuses related to the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests: arrests, torture, imprisonment, death sentences, and executions of participants; some political prisoners released.
- Severe restrictions on religious freedom.
- Arbitrary or unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and transnational repression.
- Serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including violence/threats against journalists, unjust arrests, prosecutions, and censorship.
- Significant restrictions on workers’ freedom of association and the presence of the worst forms of child labour.
- Unlawful recruitment or use of children in armed conflict by government forces and Iran-aligned groups.
- Public hangings of women who dared to reveal their hair in public.
Women in the marches are taking off their mandatory hijabs in defiance of the law, and collectively burning them in the street.
President Donald Trump has ordered Delcy Rodríguez, the temporary incumbent president of Venezuela, to immediately expel all Russian, Iranian, Chinese and Cuban military from Venezuela. In the light of the recent actions against Caracas, Trump has also threatened to put troops on the ground in Iran if any of the protestors are shot. In the early hours of Friday, January 9, reports came in of automatic weapons being used against the protestors.
How much further the protests will be able advance from here is yet to be seen, but the toppling of the 47-year-old Mullah regime in Iran will be a happening the size of which the world has not seen since the fall of the wall.
