‘The streets are full of blood’: Iranian protests gather momentum as regime cracks down | Iran

Sarah felt she had little to lose. A 50-year-old entrepreneur living in Tehran has watched prices rise as his freedoms shrink each year.

When protesters began gathering in Tehran’s upscale Andarzgoo district on Saturday night, he quickly joined them. In the video, sent to the Guardian via his cousin who lives abroad, people are seen joyfully walking down the street despite a halo of tear gas above their heads.

It consisted of crowded families, elderly people and men walking side by side. The atmosphere was calm until security forces approached and raised their assault rifles and began shooting at unarmed protesters at close range.

The next video he sent was shot in a hurry. “Shameless!” As he drove away he repeated it over and over again; The crackle of gunfire could be heard as people hurried by.

On Thursday, Iran was plunged into darkness. Authorities cut off the country from the rest of the world by shutting down the internet and international calling. The government’s initially conciliatory rhetoric changed rapidly. Gone are the offers for dialogue, replaced by death penalty threats against protesters the government accuses of being supported by Israel and the United States.

What happened next was documented in grainy videos and panicked messages sent out of the country by activists who managed to establish an instantaneous Starlink connection before the GPS signal blocked their lines.

Crowds of thousands marched across the country nightly, chanting “death to the dictator” in reference to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and for the return of the Pahlavi dynasty that ruled Iran before the 1979 revolution.

A 19-year-old student activist said on Friday: “We are marching in thousands tonight. I saw children on their parents’ shoulders, a grandmother covered in a chador chanting ‘Death to Khamenei’.” [black robe]. Do you realize how important this is?”

The protest movement, which started as a modest demonstration by shopkeepers in Tehran against the sudden depreciation of the country’s currency on December 28, quickly grew out of the government’s control.

While Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian called for dialogue and warned that the government’s action could cause inflation to rise further, signs began to emerge that security forces would crack down.

On January 4, video showing riot police raiding a hospital treating injured protesters in the western province of Ilam shocked Iranians who were outraged at the beating of patients and doctors.

At least 538 people, including 490 protesters, were killed in the violence surrounding the demonstrations, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. The group reported that more than 10,600 people were arrested by Iranian authorities.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have previously documented at least 28 killings by authorities between December 31 and January 3, some of whom were shot with rifles and shotguns loaded with metal pellets.

Pezeshkian called for an investigation into the hospital raid and other allegations of mistreatment by security forces, and unlike other Iranian officials, he said responsibility for the demonstrators’ complaints rested with the Iranian government, not foreign forces.

Promises of accountability were not enough to satisfy Iranians, and crowds increased. They were outraged by the apparent use of force against demonstrations, a pattern they had also seen in previous protest movements in 2009, 2019 and 2022.

Soran, a protester from the western city of Kermanshah, said on Wednesday: “For decades we have seen how government forces use maximum violence against us during crackdowns, and this time is no different. They are shooting at everyone.”

Diaspora and opposition figures watching from outside Iran began to see the protests as offering real hope for overthrowing the Iranian regime.

On Thursday, Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s shah who was deported during the 1979 revolution, called for united protests in the country. Pahlavi said that Iranians across the country should sing hymns from their windows and rooftops at 20:00 on Thursday, adding that he would announce the next steps depending on the reaction to his call on the field.

Iranian officials heard the call. They shut down the internet around 20:00 on Thursday. Despite the power outage, several videos showed large crowds on the streets chanting slogans supporting Pahlavi.

They found security forces waiting for them on the streets. As the flow of information from Iran gradually decreased, the authorities began to use harsh force.

Mahsa, a 28-year-old journalist from Mashhad, said before the phone connection was cut off on Thursday: “They are attacking the crowd with minibuses and bicycles. I saw them slow down and deliberately shoot people in the face. Many were injured. The streets are filled with blood. I’m afraid I’m about to witness a sea of ​​dead people.”

While Iranian streets were full of protests, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi visited Beirut. On Friday night, he sat down at the Crowne Plaza Hotel for a discussion and signing of his recently published memoir, The Power of Negotiation.

He dismissed concerns during the debate that the protests were of great importance and said that, as in other countries, complaints about prices were sometimes made public.

“Trump deployed national guards in his own country. We saw what the border police are like.” [ICE] He killed a woman. “But if Iran does this, if even a single bullet is fired, people will want to come and save them,” he said and ended the discussion by signing copies of his book.

In Iran, however, protesters said otherwise. A protester gathered in the Tajrish Arg neighborhood described how snipers shot into the crowd, saying he saw “hundreds of corpses” in the streets.

Pictures of the two Iranians began to emerge.

Throughout the day, state television and official government outlets projected an air of normalcy by broadcasting pro-government demonstrations and footage of people going about their business in neighborhoods where there was no protest activity.

Videos of nightly street protests were leaked to the rest of the world, uncovered through great efforts by activists, and shared with the Iranian diaspora abroad. Videos showed protesters defying the crackdown, with thousands marching in streets across the country despite live fire from authorities.

Since only a few people survived the internet blackout in Iran, it was difficult to see the true picture of the scale of the protests. Opposition figures from the diaspora and abroad declared that the end of the regime was near, amplifying several videos coming out of the country.

Even so little testimony from the country was saddening. A Tehran protester posted a message on Friday, saying they were beaten with sticks and watched authorities fire live bullets into the crowd. They said the number of those killed was “very high” before it went offline again.

video Bodies lying on hospital floor in Tehran It emerged Friday as human rights groups said they feared massacres were being committed even though they were unable to properly document every death.

Video of a large medical warehouse outside a hospital on Sunday Makeshift morgue in Tehran’s Kahrizak district Body bags piled inside and lined up in the adjacent courtyard were circulated on social media.

Families gathered around a television screen, eagerly awaiting the slideshow of grim faces to appear on their screens. As people removed the black plastic sheet covering the dead, women’s cries could be heard in the background.

State television insisted that the body bags contained people killed by protesters, claiming that autopsies showed bodies with stab wounds, not bullet wounds.

Reports of the resulting bloodshed reached Washington; where Donald Trump doubled down on his threat to take military action against Iran if the government kills protesters.

The US president said on the Truth Social platform on Saturday night: “Iran is looking at FREEDOM perhaps like never before. The USA is ready to help!” He was reportedly mulling over military options for attacking Iran.

The external threat only hardened the Iranian authorities’ attitude towards the protesters and fed the narrative that the West was behind the protests. Iranian police arrest protesters; The Speaker of the Parliament said that in case of military intervention by the USA, he could hit the USA or Israel.

The protests continued despite the repression, gaining a certain rhythm on Sunday as demonstrators gathered and gathered in the streets under cover of night. The world watched the protest of the Iranian people, who were unable to send support to the demonstrators who had lost contact with the outside world.

One protester from Tehran said: “Thousands of us have managed, with great difficulty, to get online so I can bring you the news. We are standing up for a revolution but we need help.”