Photo taken on Tuesday, from UGC images and posted on social media shows Iranian security forces using tear gas to disperse demonstrators in the Tehran bazaar.-/AFP/Getty Images
People in Iran’s capital shouted from their homes and rallied in the street Thursday night after a call by the country’s exiled Crown Prince for a mass demonstration, witnesses said, a new escalation in the protests that have spread nationwide across the Islamic Republic. Internet access and telephone lines in Iran cut out immediately after the protests began.
The protest represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Demonstrations have included cries in support of the shah, something that could bring a death sentence in the past but now underlines the anger fuelling the protests that began over Iran’s ailing economy.
Thursday saw a continuation of the demonstrations that popped up in cities and rural towns across Iran on Wednesday. More markets and bazaars shut down in support of the protesters. So far, violence around the demonstrations has killed at least 41 people while more than 2,270 others have been detained, said the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
The growth of the protests increases the pressure on Iran’s civilian government and its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. CloudFlare, an internet firm, and the advocacy group NetBlocks reported the internet outage, both attributing it to Iranian government interference. Attempts to dial landlines and mobile phones from Dubai to Iran could not be connected. Such outages have in the past been followed by intense government crackdowns.
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Meanwhile, the protests themselves have remained broadly leaderless. It remains unclear how Crown Prince Pahlavi’s call will affect the demonstrations moving forward.
“The lack of a viable alternative has undermined past protests in Iran,” wrote Nate Swanson of the Washington-based Atlantic Council, who studies Iran.
“There may be a thousand Iranian dissident activists who, given a chance, could emerge as respected statesmen, as labour leader Lech Walesa did in Poland at the end of the Cold War. But so far, the Iranian security apparatus has arrested, persecuted and exiled all of the country’s potential transformational leaders.”
Crown Prince Pahlavi had called for demonstrations at 8 p.m. local time on Thursday and Friday. When the clock struck, neighbourhoods across Tehran erupted in chanting, witnesses said. The chants included “Death to the dictator!” and “Death to the Islamic Republic!” Others praised the shah, shouting: “This is the last battle! Pahlavi will return!” Thousands could be seen on the streets.
“Great nation of Iran, the eyes of the world are upon you. Take to the streets and, as a united front, shout your demands,” Crown Prince Pahlavi said in a statement. “I warn the Islamic Republic, its leader and the [Revolutionary Guard] that the world and [U.S. President Donald Trump] are closely watching you. Suppression of the people will not go unanswered.”
Crown Prince Pahlavi had said he would offer further plans depending on the response to his call. His support of and from Israel has drawn criticism in the past – particularly after the 12-day war Israel waged on Iran in June. Demonstrators have shouted in support of the shah in some demonstrations, but it isn’t clear whether that’s support for Crown Prince Pahlavi himself or a desire to return to a time before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iranian officials appeared to be taking the planned protests seriously. The hard-line Kayhan newspaper published a video online claiming security forces would use drones to identify those taking part.
Iranian officials have offered no acknowledgment of the scale of the overall protests, which raged across many locations Thursday even before the 8 p.m. demonstration. However, there has been reporting regarding security officials being hurt or killed.
The judiciary’s Mizan news agency report a police colonel suffered fatal stab wounds in a town outside of Tehran, while the semi-official Fars News Agency said gunmen killed two security force members and wounded 30 others in a shooting in the city of Lordegan in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province.
A deputy governor in Iran’s Khorasan Razavi province told Iranian state television that an attack at a police station killed five people Wednesday night in Chenaran, some 700 kilometres northeast of Tehran. Late Thursday, the Revolutionary Guard said two members of its forces were killed in Kermanshah.
Dozens of people have been killed in Iran during the first nine days of protests that started in the bazaar of Tehran over the plunging value of the currency and soaring inflation, according to rights groups. This video contains graphic images.
Reuters
Iran has faced rounds of nationwide protests in recent years. As sanctions tightened and Iran struggled after the 12-day war, its rial currency collapsed in December, reaching US$1.4-million to US$1. Protests began soon after, with demonstrators chanting against Iran’s theocracy.
It remains unclear why Iranian officials have yet to crack down harder on the demonstrators. Mr. Trump warned last week that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” America “will come to their rescue.”
Mr. Trump’s comments drew a new rebuke from Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
“Recalling the long history of criminal interventions by successive U.S. administrations in Iran’s internal affairs, the Foreign Ministry considers claims of concern for the great Iranian nation to be hypocritical, aimed at deceiving public opinion and covering up the numerous crimes committed against Iranians,” it said.
But those comments haven’t stopped the U.S. State Department on the social platform X from highlighting online footage purporting to show demonstrators putting up stickers naming roads after Mr. Trump or throwing away government-subsidized rice.
“When prices are set so high that neither consumers can afford to buy nor farmers can afford to sell, everyone loses,” the State Department said in one message. “It makes no difference if this rice is thrown away.”
Meanwhile, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi remains imprisoned by authorities after her arrest in December.
“Since Dec. 28, 2025, the people of Iran have taken to the streets, just as they did in 2009, 2019,” her son Ali Rahmani said. “Each time, the same demands came up: an end to the Islamic Republic, an end to this patriarchal, dictatorial and religious regime, the end of the clerics, the end of the mullahs’ regime.”