Is anyone paying attention to what is happening in Iran?

[bsnub]

I have been following it for the last few weeks, and it seems like the islamic regime may finally be done there. I am surprised that no one else has made a thread on the topic already.

[cyrille]

I'm surprised you've started one so light on information.


Iran leaders warn protesters and foreign foes as deadly unrest ramps up | Protests News | Al Jazeera

[39TG]

I have been following it for the last few weeks, and it seems like the islamic regime may finally be done there. I am surprised that no one else has made a thread on the topic already.

I think Mr. Trump sucks up a lot of the attention. I've been following the water crisis in Tehran. I understand that millions of people might need to leave Tehran this year because of the lack of water. Ecologically Tehran is in deep deep shxt.

[bsnub]

I think that the events in Iran are the most under reported in the mainstream media.

[bsnub]

In recent days, a widening popular uprising has taken shape across Iran, as protests driven by deepening economic chaos intensify. In fact, the unrest has already left at least 20 people dead and nearly 1,000 arrested, but while the protests are rooted in economic pressures, popular grievances extend well beyond it, expressing a deeper confrontation with the Islamic Republic’s political order itself. Unlike earlier protest waves, this unrest unfolds as Iran’s core pillars—its economic viability, coercive capacity, and external deterrence—fail simultaneously, creating a systemic crisis the regime has never faced and may not survive.

Crucially, the regime’s failures are starkly visible in Iran’s accelerating water crisis, which has evolved from an environmental strain into a political fault line. A country of more than 90 million people is confronting its worst drought in over half a century, with collapsing aquifers, dried rivers, and water rationing spreading across cities and provinces. Instead of addressing decades of reckless dam construction and unsustainable agricultural policy, the regime has increasingly shifted blame outward. Iranian officials and state-aligned media have accused neighboring countries such as Turkey, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia of diverting rain clouds, and more recently have alleged that the United States and Israel are manipulating the weather.

Moreover, Iran’s water crisis directly contributes to prolonged power cuts that further intensify unrest. Power generation in Iran depends heavily on water-intensive infrastructure, leaving the grid vulnerable as reservoirs shrink. Chronic blackouts now disrupt daily life, turning infrastructure failure into immediate political anger and, alongside water shortages, accelerating mass unrest.

These resource failures are symptoms of a deeper constraint, one that operates not at the level of infrastructure but at the level of finance and state capacity. In fact, the first and second Trump administrations imposed sanctions of an unprecedented scope and intensity. Under the first “maximum pressure” campaign, the designation of the Central Bank of Iran on terrorism financing grounds severed the country from the global financial system. That single action forced Tehran to rely on an improvised shadow financial architecture centered on Dubai, Turkey, and Hong Kong, a system that the second Trump administration is now actively constricting through expanded sanctions.

The Islamic Republic’s shadow financial architecture keeps oil sales and basic trade barely functional, but it does so at the cost of systemic economic damage. Operating through opaque intermediaries, it leaks value and accelerates capital flight. Most importantly, it cuts the Central Bank off from reliable access to hard currency, leaving it structurally incapable of stabilizing the rial or containing inflation. US sanctions aggravate this dynamic by locking Iran into informal channels that prioritize regime survival over macroeconomic stability, allowing resources to be redirected toward security forces during periods of unrest while monetary policy collapses into symbolism, unable to absorb shocks or restore confidence.

US sanctions have also severely constrained Iran’s oil export base, sharply narrowing its pool of buyers. China now accounts for an estimated 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports, placing Tehran in a position of near-total dependency. This asymmetry allows Beijing to dictate terms, extract deep discounts, delay payments, and frequently substitute cash with barter arrangements. Because oil revenue remains the backbone of the Iranian state, fluctuations in oil prices or buyer behavior directly undermine the regime’s fiscal capacity. Any sustained decline in global oil prices, including scenarios involving Venezuela’s reentry into international markets, would translate into an immediate and severe fiscal shock for Tehran’s regime.

These constraints combined have produced a profoundly distorted budgetary structure. Iran’s national budget is effectively bifurcated between rial-denominated and crude-oil-denominated allocations. Because Iran cannot sell its oil through conventional financial channels, it increasingly uses oil as a substitute for cash, primarily to fund the security sector. The Ministry of Defense, for example, receives both rials and oil shipments, which it must then sell independently to finance weapons, operations, and support for proxy forces. This system pushes Iranian oil toward a small group of buyers, mainly China, forces state institutions to compete to sell crude, and drives prices down through discounts, further reducing national revenue.

At the same time, the shortage of foreign currency has forced the regime to impose extreme controls on the rial. Iran currently maintains an official exchange rate of approximately 42,000 rials per dollar, alongside a parallel market rate that is many times higher. The most recent protests erupted as the market rate neared 1.45 million rials per dollar.

This massive gap distorts everyday economic life in three reinforcing ways.

First, inflation has reached crisis levels, with official data showing a rate of 42.2 percent in December 2025, up 1.8 percent from November, while food prices surged 72 percent and health and medical goods rose 50 percent year on year. Combined with a mismanaged water crisis, these pressures sharply raise the cost of basic necessities.

Second, the erosion of pensions and savings forces households to abandon long-term planning and shift into survival mode, accelerating the flight from the rial into hard assets.

Third, the loss of confidence in the currency directly undermines the Islamic Republic’s ability to govern. When the rial no longer functions as a store of value, taxation, budgeting, and price controls lose credibility.

This is why even routine fiscal measures now trigger backlash. Reports that the government planned to raise taxes starting on March 21 immediately fueled public anger, not simply because taxes are unpopular, but because the increase is projected at 63 percent and is widely understood to finance expanding allocations to military, security, and religious institutions, including a 24 percent year-on-year budget increase for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In a context of currency collapse and eroding purchasing power, the public no longer trusts the state to manage revenue competently or distribute it equitably.

The structure of state spending itself reinforces that perception. Subsidies and redistribution function less as social protection than as instruments of political management. Fuel subsidies illustrate the problem. Artificially low prices encourage waste, worsen pollution, and sustain large smuggling networks, while draining public finances. Similar arrangements exist across multiple sectors, benefiting intermediaries and politically connected actors rather than households. At the same time, significant portions of the economy remain under the control of the IRGC and foundations linked to the supreme leader, in which loyalty and access outweigh efficiency, thereby further suppressing productivity and private investment.

The regime’s external priorities compound these internal distortions. Despite domestic collapse, Tehran continues to allocate substantial resources to regional clients and proxy forces, often at the expense of domestic investment. The public widely understands this trade-off and has made it politically salient. Protest slogans rejecting foreign entanglements reflect a growing recognition that national resources are being allocated to regional influence while living standards inside Iran steadily deteriorate.

At a deeper level, these breakdowns reveal a regime that cannot admit error. The Islamic Republic is built on an ideological claim that the supreme leader and the clerical system guiding him are not merely in charge, but fundamentally right. In this worldview, failure is never the result of the regime’s bad decisions. It is blamed on enemies, sabotage, or insufficient loyalty. That mindset makes correction almost impossible. When policies fail, the response is not adjustment but denial and repression, even as daily life becomes harder and pressure mounts.

That same dynamic has played out beyond Iran’s borders. During Israel’s 12-day Operation Rising Lion, the Islamic Republic was not simply struck militarily but exposed as deeply compromised from within. The precision of the strikes revealed extensive intelligence penetration, degraded command-and-control, and a leadership apparatus unable to protect its own senior figures or regional network. The regime struggled to respond in a way that restored deterrence because escalation risked uncontrollable retaliation, while restraint confirmed the extent of its vulnerability.

A system that insists it cannot be wrong cannot adapt when its weaknesses are laid bare. Economically, this logic produces shortages managed by force rather than resolved. Strategically, it leaves Iran exposed to further pressure. In both cases, failure is deferred rather than corrected, allowing stress to accumulate until it spills into the streets.

This is why, unlike during previous protest waves, Khamenei now faces choices with no stable exit. Repression is costly and less effective; sanctions and inflation sharply constrain resources; and external setbacks have narrowed the regime’s room to maneuver abroad. Sustaining control under these conditions requires exhausting what remains of the state’s economic and coercive capacity. The regime may survive this phase, but only by accelerating a longer-term collapse, one in which authority is preserved at the expense of viability, and survival itself becomes a process of managed decline rather than recovery. It is, indeed, the beginning of the end.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/mi...public-of-iran

[Bonecollector]

Yea it is strange how little facts are coming out about the progress of the protests. I heard last night two border towns have been taken over and many government forces have taken off their uniforms and joined the protesters. God, if Iran and Venezuela fall and come on side, Russia and China are furrrrrrrrcked. Also, Can't wait to go to Tehran!

[Topper]

Can't wait to go to Tehran!

For the water?

[Bonecollector]

For the water?

5555 heard they've got at least some left. Grrrrr cloud control.

Good hiking and ive got some Iranian friends in London from there. It will be a great vibe when the beard falls.

[david44]

God, if Iran and Venezuela fall and come on side, Russia and China are furrrrrrrrcked

Keep God out of it needs time to recover from a female Archbishop of Canterbury and the priestesses, while no fan of Putin or Xi love China and feel it will survive as for Russia Napoleon and Hitler had the same view, a people who can survive on cabbage in damp blocks through a Russian winter take some beating.

[bsnub]

God, if Iran and Venezuela fall and come on side, Russia and China are furrrrrrrrcked.

BRICS is as good as cooked.

[bsnub]

BREAKING: The people of Tehran are burning down regime buildings right now. The crowd is MASSIVE.

https://x.com/NiohBerg/status/2009334633633403391

[misskit]

At least 45 Dead After 12 Days of Continuous Protests in Iran Amid Citywide Internet Outages

Foreign news agencies reported that many cities in Iran experienced complete internet blackouts on the night of Thursday, 8 Jan 2026 GMT+7, while protests over economic conditions, ongoing for 12 days, have spread nationwide, increasing pressure on Iran’s leadership.


Although the exact cause of the internet outages remains unclear, Iranian authorities have frequently used internet shutdowns as a response to protests.


Earlier that day, NetBlocks, an organization monitoring internet freedom, reported disruptions in internet signals in Kermanshah city in western Iran, coinciding with intensified crackdowns on protesters by authorities.

The Iran Human Rights (IHR) organization, based in Norway, stated on Thursday that Iranian security forces have killed at least 45 protesters, including 8 children, since the protests began in late December.


Shop owners responded to calls from seven Kurdish political groups to strike on Thursday, closing businesses in predominantly Kurdish areas and dozens of other cities across Iran. By Thursday, protests had spread to all 31 provinces with no signs of abating.


In the southern Fars province, protesters toppled a statue of General Qasem Soleimani, the late commander of Iran’s Quds Force, as a show of opposition to the government, given his status as a revered hero among government supporters.


IHR reported that the previous Wednesday was the bloodiest day in the 12-day protest period, with 13 deaths, hundreds injured, and more than 2,000 arrests.




However, Iranian state media and official statements reported at least 21 deaths, including security personnel, since the protests began.


This is the largest protest movement in Iran in over three years. While the scale has not matched the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, it has nevertheless exerted significant pressure on Iran’s political and security leadership.


Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian called on Thursday for patience in handling the demonstrations, urging avoidance of violence or intimidation, and encouraging dialogue, participation, and listening to public demands.


The protests were triggered by a sudden sharp depreciation of the national currency and a general economic downturn, posing a challenge for the government to address protesters’ grievances amid ongoing currency decline and the cancellation of subsidized exchange rates for importers, which has rapidly driven up consumer prices.


Everyday life is becoming increasingly unaffordable for Iranians, with average food prices rising by about 70% compared to the previous year, and medicine prices increasing by roughly 50% over the same period.


The government says that resolving the worsening economic crisis largely exceeds its capacity. Despite efforts to tackle corruption and price gouging, it has limited tools to address the problems. It blames the country’s economic hardships mainly on external factors, particularly severe Western sanctions imposed in response to Iran’s nuclear program.

At least 45 Dead After 12 Days of Continuous Protests in Iran Amid Citywide Internet Outages

[bsnub]

The Tehran tyranny Islamic symbol is removed from a building and hauled away to the refuge yards! Don't tell the BBC or they will be sad.

https://x.com/DVATW/status/2009266217945645493

[cyrille]

Not sure from a Musk r slicker on X is worthy of attention.

[bsnub]

Musk r slicker

No idea what the fuck that is.

[Norton]

Iran was plunged into a nationwide internet blackout Thursday evening as mass anti-government protests spread around the country, with Iranians shouting slogans against the ruling theocratic regime as anger mounts over a flailing economy and security crackdowns.

Authorities cut internet access and telephone lines immediately after the protests in the capital Tehran and other major cities began Thursday night, with demonstrations now continuing well into their second week.

An internet watchdog organization described the move as a precursor to a possible violent crackdown, although the blackout did not immediately prevent the posting of videos of the protests.

From as far west as Ilam, a Kurdish-majority region bordering Iraq, to Tehran and Mashhad, in the northeast near the Afghan border, people in more than 100 cities have taken to the streets since protests first erupted 12 days ago. Authorities have reverted to their tested playbook of cracking down without offering viable solutions to grievances driving public anger.

Iran protests: internet blackout as nationwide anti-government turmoil spreads to Tehran | CNN

[harrybarracuda]

I think that the events in Iran are the most under reported in the mainstream media.

I've been reading about it.

I suspect Trump threatening to invade a NATO country is of more interest to the world right now.

[bsnub]

Wow… Iranians have gathered outside the BBC, expressing their anger over lack of coverage on Iran protests

https://x.com/Nervana_1/status/2009768603747275092

[Bonecollector]

A few videos of police crack downs are beginning to appear.

[cyrille]

Yes, it's so surprising that the BBC isn't right on this with film crews all over it, as with the US networks.

[Hugh Cow]

"Your submission could not be processed because the token has expired.

Please push the back button and reload the previous"

WTF is this? lost my whole post which was quite long and obviously brilliantly written

[bsnub]

A few videos of police crack downs are beginning to appear.

I challenge you to post them up. I am seeing something quite different. The protests are confirmed in 100+ cities so far, and Tehran is fully under control of the protesters who burned down the Al-Rasool Mosque in Tehran.

[bsnub]

President Trump has said the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is looking to flee the country as protests against his rule continue to spread.

Thousands of Iranians took to the streets on Friday night during an internet blackout by the authorities as what started as anger over the collapsing economy escalated into the most significant wave of dissent against the Islamic regime since demonstrations over disputed elections in 2009.

“He’s looking to go some place,” Trump had earlier told Fox News when asked about a western intelligence report, revealed by The Times last weekend, that suggested the supreme leader could flee.

The “enthusiasm to overturn that regime is incredible”, Trump said, adding that “it could be” on the verge of collapse.

Trump has warned that the United States would “hit them very hard” if the Iranian authorities used more deadly force against protesters.

Taking questions at the White House on Friday, Trump said: “Iran’s in big trouble. It looks to me like the people are taking over certain cities that no one thought was really possible a few weeks ago.
Asked on his message to Iran’s leaders, Trump said, “You better not start shooting because we’ll start shooting too.”

“If they start killing people like they have in the past, we will get involved… That doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very hard, where it hurts.”

Describing the protests as “amazing,” Trump added of the regime: “They’ve treated their people very badly, and now they are getting paid back.”

As fears mounted that the Islamic republic could meet the protests using greater violent force, on Friday Sir Keir Starmer issued a joint statement with President Macron of France and Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, urging the Iranian authorities to “exercise restraint” and allow “freedom of expression and peaceful assembly without fear of reprisal”.

More than 50 Iranians, including nine children, have been killed in almost two weeks of anti-regime demonstrations, which have spread from the capital, Tehran, to provinces across the country.

Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel peace laureate, warned on Friday that security forces could be preparing to commit a “massacre under the cover of a sweeping communications blackout”.

The internet shutdown was “not a technical failure … it is a tactic”, the former judge and campaigner, who lives in exile, said on social media. She claimed hundreds of people had been taken to a Tehran hospital on Thursday with “severe eye injuries” caused by pellet gunfire.

The shutdown of most internet services means bank cash machines are not working, and shops cannot deal with card transactions.

Khamenei responded on Friday by accusing Trump of encouraging “vandals” and “saboteurs” to demonstrate, and advising the US president to take care of his own problems, after protests in Minneapolis over the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration agent.

The White House said Tehran’s claims that the US was helping to fuel protests were “delusional” and “an attempt to deflect from the massive challenges the Iranian regime faces at home”.

The regime has been divided about how to respond since the protests began with a strike by shopkeepers in the Grand Bazaar, Tehran, on December 28. Although Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the Iranian judiciary chief, has vowed that protesters will face “decisive, maximum” punishment “without any legal leniency”, President Pezeshkian has urged the authorities to take a “kind and responsible approach”.

The western intelligence report said Khamenei, 86, had plotted an exit route to an unspecified destination for him and an inner circle by “gathering assets, properties abroad and cash to facilitate their safe passage”.

But the supreme leader, who succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, declared on Friday that he would “not back down”. He said Trump’s hands were “stained with the blood of more than a thousand Iranians”, in an apparent reference to Israel’s war last year against the Islamic republic, which the US supported and joined with stealth bomber strikes on its nuclear facilities.

“Last night in Tehran and in some other places, a group of vandals came and damaged buildings belonging to their own country just to please the president of the United States,” Khamenei said.

It was the “arrogant” Trump who would be “overthrown”, he claimed. “He wants to side with the rioters and harmful individuals — if he can, he should go and run his own country.”

From Thursday the Iranian government shut down internet access and attempted to block international phone calls, but Iranians used Elon Musk’s Starlink and other technology to post content online that showed big crowds and buildings on fire.

Rozita, a 37-year-old transportation manager who has become one of Iran’s most prominent anti-government protesters and influencers, told The Times: “We love Trump.”

She added: “When Mr Trump threatened this regime, we were all happy, we were stronger. We know that if he says something, he will act on it, and the government knows that and they will pull back. So we can move forward easier than before.”

A video from Tehran’s Sadatabad district on Friday night showed people banging pots and chanting anti-governments slogans including “death to Khamenei”, as cars hooted in support.

Similar protests took place elsewhere in Tehran, while large demonstrations also took place in the eastern city of Mashhad, Tabriz in the north and the holy city of Qom.

Some protesters on the streets were heard chanting “death to the dictator” in reference to Khamenei, as well as slogans in support of the shah, the monarch who was deposed by the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah who has lived in exile for 48 years, encouraged people to take to the streets.

Videos appeared to show vehicles set on fire by protesters in Sattar Khan, a district of the capital, while other demonstrations were filmed in northern towns near the Caspian coast to Kish island, in the Gulf.

A statue of Qasem Soleimani, the Revolutionary Guards commander, was filmed being pulled down by protesters in the western city of Qaemyeh on Thursday. Soleimani has been eulogised by the regime as a hero and martyr since he was killed in a US airstrike in Baghdad in 2020.

One of the chants was: “This is the last battle, Pahlavi will return.” Another was: “Death to the Islamic republic!” Thousands of people were seen on the streets before communication was cut.

Videos showed protesters setting fire to the entrance of the state television’s regional branch in the central city of Isfahan.

Flames were also seen in the governor’s building in Shazand, in the Markazi province, after protesters gathered outside.

Iran has offered little in the way of solutions to economic grievances, apart from a plan to provide some citizens with a monthly payment equivalent to about $7.

The protests have broken out in the majority of Iran’s 31 provinces since the shopkeepers of the Grand Bazaar staged a strike over inflation soaring to 40 per cent over the past year.

Pahlavi, 65, called for bigger protests on Friday “to make the crowd even larger so that the regime’s repressive power becomes even weaker”.

He also encouraged Trump to intervene directly. “Mr President, this is an urgent and immediate call for your attention, support and action,” Pahlavi wrote on social media. “Please be prepared to intervene to help the people of Iran.”

https://www.thetimes.com/world/middl...miRs5tSw%3D%3D

[Bonecollector]

I challenge you to post them up. I am seeing something quite different. The protests are confirmed in 100+ cities so far, and Tehran is fully under control of the protesters who burned down the Al-Rasool Mosque in Tehran.

Yeah to be fair could be from the last protests, you just don't know these days.

[cyrille]

Tehran is fully under control of the protesters who burned down the Al-Rasool Mosque in Tehran.

Is that right.

I challenge you to put up something from a reliable source that says that.