Iran

How does an authoritarian regime die? As Ernest Hemingway famously said about going broke – gradually then suddenly.

The protesters in Iran and their supporters abroad were hoping that the Islamic regime in Tehran was at the suddenly stage. The signs are, if it is dying, it is still at gradual.

The last two weeks of unrest add up to a big crisis for the regime. Iranian anger and frustration have exploded into the streets before, but the latest explosion comes on top of all the military blows inflicted on Iran in the last two years by the US and Israel.

Huh?

New footage
shows rioters attacking rescue & police forces in #Mashhad, #Iran — these are not peaceful protesters, but violent elements undermining public safety. pic.twitter.com/6Xfik794cj

— ☫ Iran Embassy in The Hague, The Netherlands (@IRAN_in_NL) January 13, 2026

With the government shutting down the internet and throttling phone services, Iranians are leaning heavily on Elon Musk’s Starlink service to share videos of growing protests and the regime’s escalating crackdown with the world.

But Iran has intensified efforts to jam the service, which is banned in the country, and users are being hunted.

Over the weekend, authorities began searching for and confiscating Starlink dishes in western Tehran, said Amir Rashidi, director of digital rights and security at Miaan Group, a U.S. nonprofit opposed to internet censorship.

Iranian man warns that Sharia law starts with unity between the left and Islamists.

Pay attention to what he’s saying. The same alliance between the left and Islam that is happening in the West happened in Iran decades ago. That’s how Iran became an Islamic theocracy. pic.twitter.com/UwoBHLKpOV

— Dr. Maalouf ‏ (@realMaalouf) November 6, 2025

“I saw it with my own eyes – they fired directly into lines of protesters, and people fell where they stood.”

Omid’s voice was shaking as he spoke, fearful of being traced. Breaking the wall of silence between Iran and the rest of the world takes immense courage, given the risk of reprisals by the authorities.

Omid, in his early 40s and whose name we have changed for his safety, has been protesting on the streets of a small city in southern Iran over the past few days against worsening economic hardship.

Iranians chanting “Iran! Iran! Iran!” in front of the burning Al-Rasool mosque which was used as an IRGC Basij militia base for suppressing the protests in Tehran.

pic.twitter.com/yHd5uUs9Jj

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) January 12, 2026

"Effective immediately, any Country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a Tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America. This Order is final and conclusive…." – PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP pic.twitter.com/UQ1ylPezs9

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 12, 2026

‘The Zionist regime is melting before the eyes of the world’, gloated Ayatollah Khamenei in the aftermath of Hamas’s pogrom of 7 October 2023. His giddy foretelling of the death of the Jewish nation was echoed across the realm of Israelophobia. Israel’s downfall ‘is a matter of when, not if’, said the Islamo-loons of 5 Pillars. Leftist hotheads agreed that the invasion of Israel by Iran’s proxies sounded the death knell for ‘the Zionist project’.

In Shahsavar, northern Iran, thousands of anti-regime protesters took to the streets. pic.twitter.com/VTSM1MK8yN

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) January 11, 2026

Iran has called on Donald Trump’s administration to negotiate after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its use of lethal force on protesters.

The death toll in the nationwide demonstrations has risen to at least 544, human rights groups said on Monday. Mr Trump said that Iran had started to cross a line with their violent response to protesters.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said on Monday morning that the protesters were “now under total control” after claiming “terrorists” had targeted both protesters and security officials.

Ahmadreza Radan, Islamic Republic’s Chief of Police, on Iran protests (Jan 7, 2026):
“We vow to come after the rioters, down to the very last one. We will come after every single person who spreads this, down to the last one.”#IranProtests pic.twitter.com/x7UkDjOb5n

— حافظه تاریخی (@hafezeh_tarikhi) January 11, 2026

BREAKING:

Islamic authorities in Iran have announced the imminent executions of participants in anti-regime protests.

Officials said that following expedited court proceedings, the first group of convicted “ringleaders of unrest” will be executed on Wednesday morning.

Among… pic.twitter.com/CnTFXr7ITu

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) January 12, 2026

I don’t trust the Mullahs for some reason.

The Middle East has long been organised around two competing logics: pragmatic alignment and ideological alignment. Before the 7 October war, these logics produced two regional blocs that structured most political, diplomatic and security behaviour. The Palestinian attack and invasion that triggered the war ruptured both systems. Incentives shifted, alliances frayed, and assumptions collapsed. What followed has not been the emergence of a calmer order, but a reconfiguration in which ideology has returned in new forms and pragmatism has narrowed, and hardened, requiring deliberate encouragement and support to survive.

For more than a decade, regional politics moved along these two tracks. Pragmatic alliances rested on interests that could be negotiated, measured and enforced. Security cooperation, intelligence sharing, economic integration, technological exchange and opposition to common threats mattered more than symbolic solidarity. Stability carried value. Growth carried legitimacy. Ideological discomfort could be managed or deferred.

This Palestinian activist is very angry that the Iranian protests are diverting attention from Palestine and says she doesn’t support the Free Iran movement because it’s ‘rooted in Islamophobia.’

Why are they always like this?

pic.twitter.com/C603LXaKe5

— Dr. Maalouf ‏ (@realMaalouf) January 11, 2026

If Iran’s widely despised supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, flees into exile in Moscow in the face of a collapsing Iranian regime as has been suggested, he will join a small circle of toppled despots living in relative comfort in the Russian capital.

That prospect gained traction this week following a report in the Times of London which, quoting intelligence sources, said the Iranian leader has prepared a backup plan to flee to the Russian capital with about 20 family and close associates if his regime continues to crumble.

This is what dissent looks like when the stakes are life and death.

In the West, we’re used to protest as performance.
In Iran, it can be a death sentence.

Do not underestimate the courage it takes for an uncovered woman, on camera, to do this. pic.twitter.com/L9YOyOYVwI

— Gerald Posner (@geraldposner) January 10, 2026

Iran protesters defy crackdown as videos show violent clashes

Protesters in Iran defied a deadly government crackdown on Saturday night, taking to the streets despite reports suggesting hundreds of people have been killed or wounded by security forces in the past three days.

Verified videos and eyewitness accounts seen by the BBC appeared to show the government was ramping up its response, as it continues an overarching internet blackout.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the western media and western Left are not covering or supporting the Iranian protests for freedom. It is anathema for them to give a helping hand to such an ‘Islamophobic’ nightmare. What is transpiring in Iran is a dreadful nightmare for the Left – because it’s oxygen, blood-supply and identity are rooted in its alliance with communism, Islam and every other adversarial totalitarian monstrous genocidal death-cult.

Government buildings burn in Iran. The end must be close now, will this demonstrate that a tyrannical Government can be removed by people power ? It’s an interesting thought isn’t it ? pic.twitter.com/aa3qBXcWt4

— Andrew Bridgen (@ABridgen) January 10, 2026