Night after night over the past week, Fatemeh, 38, tucked her two children into bed, opened her bedroom window to Tehran’s cold winter air and knelt down to chant “Death to the dictator” along with protesters on the streets below.
Like many Iranians, Fatemeh – who is using a pseudonym for her safety – hopes the protests, which have become the largest in years, can help usher in an end to Islamic rule and the reign of 86-year-old supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
But amidst the sounds of tear gas and bullets in the city below, Fatemeh did not dare to go out. The brutal crackdown has left a flood of victims. Activists abroad estimate hundreds to thousands of people have been killed, and even state media have broadcast footage of rows of bodies covered in plastic bags.
Residents have shared descriptions of burnt-out buses, mosques and police stations in their cities, while officials have accused armed agitators of hiding among protesters – while internet blackouts have cut off most Iranians from the outside world.
“If we go out we are killed,” Fatemeh said. “I promised my brothers they wouldn’t do this… I can’t even imagine looking for their bodies in those plastic bags.”
The protests began late last month with shopkeepers demonstrating in Tehran over the economic crisis and mismanagement, before spreading across the country.
They have suddenly spiraled into the most serious anti-regime unrest since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, with protesters from all social classes joining calls for the overthrow of the theocracy.
“We don’t want to see any more Islamic republics in power,” said a 67-year-old man who was wounded fighting for the regime in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. “We see nothing but embezzlement. We are struggling to afford food while regime allies are vacationing in Europe and Canada.”
Protests were at their largest on Thursday and Friday nights, as much of the city was filled with thousands of protesters. But while some remained peaceful, in other cases protesters attacked security forces and police stations.
Witnesses said Iran’s military and security forces used batons, tear gas, pellet bullets and live ammunition to disperse crowds and prevent raids and attacks.
The intensity of the unrest has shocked Iranians. Many fear their country is headed toward the kind of civil war that has divided others in the region.
People don’t want Iran to “turn into another Syria or Libya,” said Mohammad-Sadegh Javadi-Hesar, a reformist politician in the north-eastern city of Mashhad, another protest site.
“This level of violence was almost unprecedented (since the revolution), with Iranians, both the opposition and security forces, killing each other in the streets, with scenes of beheadings and burnt corpses. It was absolutely horrific.”
Since then, at least during the day, there has been some peace on the streets of Tehran. The city’s congested streets are filled with traffic, with residents leaving their homes to buy goods, conduct banking transactions and go to work.
However, state hospitals are operating at full capacity, while police and intelligence services have warned families to keep youngsters off the streets. Residents who go out in daylight flee home in the evening, fearing that even sporadic demonstrations could escalate into new incidents of large-scale violence.
In a show of force, thousands of supporters of the Islamic Republic rallied in central Tehran on Monday to demonstrate their loyalty to the religious order.
A five-day internet blackout has obscured the true extent of the destruction, including for Iranians themselves.
While authorities have allowed limited connectivity for domestic phone calls – allowing friends and relatives to check on news of the dead, injured or missing – internet access abroad remained closed as of Tuesday evening.
Some Iranians have used Elon Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink to leak footage of the violence, which is banned in Iran, and satellite television channels broadcast from abroad remain accessible.
There is no official data available on the death toll. State media have released the names and numbers of security personnel who were among those killed.
However, with the intensity of violence beyond anything Iranians have experienced before, some observers who spoke to the FT said the momentum of the protests has faded because people are fearful.
A Tehran-based analyst said, “It was predictable that, if violence escalated, the middle class would immediately retreat.” “If things move towards civil war, groups like ISIS could also emerge in Iran. Some of the killings were unusual and reminiscent of ISIS-style violence in Iraq and Syria. This is extremely worrying.”
Although officials have tried to acknowledge that protesters’ complaints over the currency collapse and rising inflation are legitimate, they claim the unrest has been hijacked by Israeli agents and Iranian opposition figures who are armed and active on the ground.
For example, the Islamic Republic has long accused the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an exiled militant opposition group backed by some staunch American Republicans, of fomenting instability and violence.
Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official, described the unrest as the second phase of Israel’s 12-day war on Iran in June, which left dozens of senior military commanders and nuclear scientists dead along with more than 1,000 civilians, according to officials.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly warned the regime that he would use force to “protect” protesters if Tehran used violence against protesters. The White House said on Monday it was considering air strikes.
Iranian analysts and Western diplomats in Tehran say Trump’s threats have increased the momentum of protesters, leading large numbers of people to believe that the US is preparing to overthrow the regime if they continue to take to the streets.
The protests appear to have no clear leadership, and Iran’s internal dissent has largely been channeled through the regime’s reformist wing, which remains broadly loyal to the system despite repeated repression.
While the protesters’ primary demand is the ouster of Khamenei, who has ruled since 1989, many have rallied around a familiar, if controversial, alternative: Reza Pahlavi, the Washington-based son of Iran’s last shah, who was overthrown in the Islamic revolution.
They appeared to heed Pahlavi’s call to demonstrate on Thursday and Friday nights – the first time the 65-year-old exiled royal has played such a prominent role.
Iranian analysts and Western diplomats in Tehran do not see Pahlavi as a serious alternative, but their frustrations are such that they are heard.
Iranians are divided over what direction the protests will take in the coming weeks, especially if Trump follows through on his threat to attack Iran.
Some argued that such a move would only serve to unify the otherwise polarized country’s residents, as happened when Israel’s June war prompted Iranians to rally around the flag.
“The United States is wrong to think … people will flood the streets again,” Javadi-Heiser said. “People can no longer kill each other. On the contrary, the American attack could further strengthen the Islamic Republic.”
Yet, after decades of Khamenei’s rule, many Iranians are so desperate for any kind of change that they are willing to face all kinds of possibilities – even if it plunges them further into the unknown.
“Pahlavi, a cleric of this regime or even a military man, whom I hate the most, will have my support if they improve my life,” said a thirty-year-old artist who was hit by tear gas in demonstrations Thursday night. The depth of the decline under the current system “was no joke. It horrifies me.”
