Iran’s protest movement recedes after waves of unrest

• Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran, says the government will fall.
• Netblocks says the internet outage lasted over 180 hours.
• Tasnim reports that rioters burned down the education office in Isfahan.
  

Tensions in Iran have eased after three weeks of protests under an internet blackout, monitors said on Friday, a week after the biggest protests in years began challenging the country’s leaders.

The son of Iran’s late shah, however, said he was confident the government would fall and called for intervention, although the threat of new military action by the United States against Iran appears to have subsided for now.

The protests, fueled by economic protests, began with a shutdown in Tehran’s bazaar on December 28, but turned into a mass movement demanding the removal of the system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 revolution.

People began pouring into the streets of major cities on January 8, but authorities immediately imposed an internet blackout that lasted more than a week.

Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah of Iran, told a news conference in Washington that the government “will fall — not if, but when.”

“I will return to Iran,” he said.

Monitor Netblocks reported that the “total internet blackout” in Iran had now lasted more than 180 hours, longer than a similar measure imposed during the 2019 protests.

Amnesty International said this was supported by the use of heavily armed patrols and checkpoints to deal with nationwide protests, with security forces visible on the streets.

“Give Iran a Chance”

Trump, who supported and participated in Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in June, had not ruled out further military action against Tehran and made clear he was watching closely whether any protesters were executed.

But a senior Saudi official told AFP on Thursday that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman led “a long, frantic, last-minute diplomatic effort to persuade President Trump to give Iran a chance to show good intent.”

While Washington appeared to have backed down, the White House said Thursday that “all options remain on the table for the president.”

Attention had focused on the fate of a single protester, Erfan Soltani, a 26-year-old rights activist who Washington said was to be executed as early as Wednesday.

Iranian justice, however, said Soltani had not been sentenced to death and his charges meant he was not at risk of the death penalty.

Human rights groups estimate that up to 20,000 people have been arrested. Security officials quoted by the Tasnim news agency on Friday said around 3,000 people had been arrested.

“All Iranians United”

The US Treasury Department on Thursday announced new sanctions targeting Iranian officials, including Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, held phone talks with Iranian President Massoud Pezheskian in what the Kremlin described as “efforts to facilitate de-escalation”.

At the UN Security Council in New York, Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, invited to address the body by Washington, said “all Iranians are united” against the government in Iran.

Iran’s representative at the meeting, Gholamhossein Darzi, accused Washington of “exploiting peaceful protests for geopolitical purposes.”

There were signs of unrest in some areas, however.

The state-run Tasnim news agency reported that rioters set fire to a local education office in Falavarjan County, central Isfahan province, on Thursday.

An elderly resident of a city in Iran’s northwestern region, home to many Kurdish Iranians and the epicenter of many of the biggest outbreaks, said sporadic protests continued, though not as intense.

Describing the violence earlier in the protests, he said: “I have never seen scenes like this before.”

State broadcaster Press TV quoted Iran’s police chief as saying calm had been restored across the country.

Tasnim also reported what it described as the arrest of a large number of leaders of the recent riots in the western province of Kermanshah and the arrest of five people accused of vandalizing a Basij gas station and base in the southeastern city of Kerman.