International relations researcher Hossein Aghaei said any possible US strike on Iran would likely be designed from the outset with the aim of toppling the Islamic Republic.
He said Iran would be likely to retaliate if attacked, and that this risk would shape how Washington would plan any military action.
Internet experts are warning that Iran’s sweeping nationwide internet blackout is being used to shield lethal crackdowns on protesters, cutting off evidence of state violence as unrest continues across the country.
“This is the worst internet shutdown in Iran’s history,” said Ali Tehrani, director of Washington operations for Psiphon, an open-source anti-censorship tool widely used in Iran. “Even Starlink uploads have been affected.”
Tehrani said supporting internet freedom in Iran must become a serious and active priority for the U.S. government, particularly as Iranian authorities increasingly rely on digital blackouts during periods of unrest.
Cybersecurity expert Amin Sabeti told Iran International that the blackout, which began Thursday evening local time, has severed access to the global internet across much of the country and disrupted domestic online services that remained partially available during previous crackdowns.
“This is the most extreme internet shutdown we’ve ever had,” Sabeti said, adding that its scope signals a significant escalation in Tehran’s use of digital repression amid nationwide unrest.
‘Iranians will die’
Iranian authorities have imposed the communications blackout to prevent protesters from coordinating and to stop evidence of state violence from reaching the outside world.
Tehrani said the current shutdown is even more severe than the near-total blackout during the November 2019 uprising, widely known as Bloody Aban, named after the month in the Persian calendar when the protests occurred.
“It’s not just for The Washington Post that democracy dies in the darkness—it’s Iranians that die in the dark,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Taleblu said communications shutdowns are a core component of Iran’s repression strategy, designed to sever the link between protesters and the international community while security forces operate with reduced scrutiny.
Dozens killed
Despite the blackout, Iran International said it has received and reviewed a disturbing video showing several people lying motionless on the ground following large protests held Thursday night in Fardis, about 25 miles west of Tehran.
The outlet said the shutdown has obstructed efforts to determine the full scale of casualties shown in the footage.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran said on Friday that it has grave and urgent concerns that Iranian security forces may be carrying out lethal repression under the cover of the internet shutdown.
The group said it has received credible first-hand reports of hospitals overwhelmed with injured protesters in several cities and has documented the use of live ammunition by security forces.
It warned that reports of mass killings from the night of January 8 could not be independently verified due to the communications blackout.
In a speech on Friday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei left little doubt that Tehran intends to confront the current wave of protests with force rather than concession.
The remarks pointed to an intensifying crackdown, unfolding amid a near-total internet shutdown across Iran.
Those signals have placed renewed focus on Washington, where US President Donald Trump has issued repeated public warnings to Tehran in recent days, including statements suggesting the United States could act if Iranian authorities continue killing protesters.
Whether those threats translate into policy remains unclear, but they have sharpened attention on how the White House responds as events unfold inside Iran.
Khamenei’s remarks, which included renewed accusations that protesters are being directed by foreign powers, were accompanied by direct criticism of Trump, who late Thursday night warned Iran against further violence.
Taken together, the exchanges have added to tensions already heightened by months of mutual suspicion and rhetorical escalation.
The result has been growing unease across the Iran–US–Israel triangle. Iranian officials routinely frame internal unrest as foreign intrigue, while Israeli leaders have long described the Islamic Republic as a persistent, existential threat.
Risk of escalation
Iran’s rulers now appear increasingly concerned that the United States or Israel could seek to exploit domestic instability—fears that, in turn, risk shaping Tehran’s military calculations.
Earlier this week, Iran’s National Defense Council and other security bodies issued statements warning that the country could carry out a preemptive strike if it detected preparations for an attack.
Those warnings coincided with missile tests, moves officials described as defensive but which analysts say added another layer of volatility.
The rhetoric and military signaling have raised fears of escalation even in the absence of clear intent on any side to seek a confrontation.
In Israel, security officials have expressed concern that Iran could attempt to divert attention from internal unrest by provoking an external crisis, though many analysts consider such a move unlikely.
Still, Israel’s heightened sensitivity to risk since the October 7 attacks has reinforced a preference for preparing for worst-case scenarios.
Critical decisions
As Iran’s leadership faces mounting pressure at home, the margin for error abroad appears to be narrowing.
Clear signals of US support for protesters, even if not backed by immediate action, risk aggravating Tehran’s fears of external intervention, while Iranian military signaling increases the danger of miscalculation.
Some in Washington worry that even limited American involvement—military or otherwise—could destabilize an already fragile regional balance and draw Israel into a broader confrontation.
At the same time, a White House decision to refrain from action, despite repeated warnings, could also carry consequences. Protesters inside Iran have often looked to international pressure for protection or leverage, and the absence of follow-through could further dampen momentum on the streets.
What is clear is that Iran’s internal crisis is no longer insulated from its external rivalries.
Developments inside the country now carry implications far beyond its borders, raising the risk that repression at home could intersect with miscalculation abroad—between Iran, the United States and Israel.
The idea that Iran could change course through a shift at the top—without the collapse of the structure itself, and with a pragmatic figure opening up to the world—rests on a false assumption about how power actually works in Tehran.
That assumption has been reinforced by recent developments in Venezuela, where the United States forcibly removed Nicolás Maduro from power and now appears prepared to work with figures from within the same governing apparatus.
But Iran is not Venezuela, and treating it as such misunderstands the nature of the Islamic Republic’s power structure.
In Venezuela, despite corruption and the concentration of power, the political system is not security-ideological and transnational in the way Iran’s is. Loyalties and alliances in Caracas can shift without forcing a fundamental remake of the establishment.
Can the same be said about Tehran?
Over the past four decades, the original theocracy has evolved into a complex security-ideological power machine whose core lies within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its affiliated networks. This machine is not merely an instrument of the system; it has become inseparable from it.
The IRGC, the Quds Force, parallel intelligence bodies, and a web of armed groups across the region are better understood as a single, tightly interwoven power structure. Even the potential departure of Iran’s supreme leader would be unlikely to alter, let alone dismantle, this organism.
Ali Khamenei may embody the Islamic Republic, and his name is often used interchangeably with the “system,” but the state itself encompasses thousands of actors across the Revolutionary Guards, security institutions and affiliated bodies.
These networks have cooperated operationally with aligned forces in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan—working together in war, negotiation, and crisis management.
Other parts of the same apparatus have spent years developing missile and nuclear programs, accumulating expertise, institutional memory, and vested interests.
This is the product of a shared political and security life: a layered network in which relationships, trust, and interests have solidified over time. Such a network does not collapse with the departure of a single figure, or even a single faction.
Security relationships and interests built over decades are far more likely to reproduce themselves than to disappear with a leadership change. The leader may go, but the system’s underlying logic will remain.
That logic rests on several widely entrenched pillars: the expansion of the nuclear program; the development of missile and drone capabilities; the preservation and extension of regional proxy networks; and the definition of political identity in opposition to the United States and the West.
These are not merely policy preferences open to negotiation. They are widely treated within the system as pillars of survival. Betting on figures drawn from within this structure to shed their skin risks reproducing the very logic such a strategy claims to transcend.
The image of a moderate caretaker or a deal-making leader emerging as a Bonaparte-like figure capable of transforming the system is therefore closer to political fantasy than practical possibility.
Comparing Iran to Venezuela is ultimately a comparison between two dissimilar systems.
In Venezuela, alliances can shift while the structure remains intact. In Iran, the structure itself is the source of the crisis. The container and its contents are one and the same. A change of skin does not resolve that contradiction.
For Iranians—and for the wider world—the problem with the Islamic Republic cannot be solved by changing faces. A durable solution can only be contemplated when this structure gives way to an order that is fundamentally different, shaped by actors who are fundamentally different as well.
It began with metal shutters dropping in Tehran. At two neighboring shopping centers, shopkeepers on Dec. 28 pulled down their doors as security forces moved in, and the first chants rose from the corridors into the street.
“Honorable merchants; support, support!” When security forces arrived, the most urgent refrain was not yet a political manifesto. It was a promise of mutual protection: “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid; we’re all in this together.”
From there, the videos show how quickly what many initially read as an economic protest widened into something explicitly political.
Iran International reviewed 463 clips from the uprising’s first 10 days – recorded in 91 cities, towns and villages – and coded every instance in which chants were clearly audible.
Across the footage, we identified 93 distinct chants heard across 641 recorded chant instances, or occurrences of chants in the videos, not a count of unique slogans or unique events.
The slogans heard across that footage trace a rapid shift: from strike calls and solidarity to direct rejection of the Islamic Republic and, increasingly, calls for the return of monarchy.
That first day, the footage was narrow. Beyond one clip from Shoush market – where merchants chanted, “Pezeshkian, have some shame; give up the presidency” – few other slogans from outside the merchants’ immediate world were clearly audible in the videos we reviewed.
On the second day, strike calls such as “Close up, close up” still echoed through the bazaars – but the protest vocabulary broke decisively into open confrontation with the Islamic Republic.
In Tehran, chants like “Until the cleric is buried, this homeland won’t become a homeland” and “Cannons, tanks, fireworks; mullahs must go” signaled a shift from trade grievance to political defiance.
That same day, a line surfaced that would come to define the first 10 days in our video analysis: “This is the final battle; Pahlavi will return.”
From this point forward, the uprising’s slogans were no longer simply about pressure or protest. They were about power – and what should replace it.
The pro-Pahlavi chant was heard in universities too, surprising some observers and even triggering accusations of video manipulations.
At Allameh Tabataba’i University, students chanted, “Neither Pahlavi nor the Supreme Leader, freedom and equality.” At Beheshti University, a line from the Woman Life Freedom movement of 2022 was heard: “You’re the lecher; you’re the whore; I am a free woman."
As the days went on, the geography widened.
The footage moved beyond Tehran into smaller cities and towns – Kouh-Chenar, Farsan, Asadabad, Juneghan – while protests continued in dormitories as well as streets.
What stood out across these scenes was not only the spread of the demonstrations, but the repetition of two dominant political poles in what people shouted: opposition to the Islamic Republic, and support for the Pahlavi family.
By the middle of the 10-day period, the uprising’s language also began to absorb the weight of mourning. Chants were not only rallying cries, but elegies.
In Kouhdasht, mourners chanted: “This flower has been torn apart; it has become a gift to the homeland.” They also repeated the slogans already familiar from the streets: “Pahlavi will return,” and “Death to the dictator.”
In Fooladshahr, mourners chanted “Death to Khamenei” at the burial of Dariush Ansari, one of the first protesters killed in this round of unrest. In Marvdasht, at the burial of Khodadad Shirvani Monfared, “Long live the Shah” was also chanted.
The uprising was not speaking in one register. It was speaking in many – anger, grief, defiance, and sometimes myth.
In Zahedan, footage recorded “Allahu Akbar” and “Death to Khamenei” after Friday prayers. In a village in Hamedan province, another line appeared: “Wail, Seyyed Ali (Khamenei); Pahlavi is coming.”
In Shiraz University’s dormitory courtyard, students chanted: “The Shah is coming home; Zahhak will be overthrown” – using the mythic tyrant Zahhak as a stand-in for Khamenei.
Toward the end of the 10 days, the volume of videos fell – fewer clips surfaced in our review – yet some of the most intense scenes were recorded in that period.
Funerals in Malekshahi, Ilam province, for Latif Karimi, Reza Azimi, and Mehdi Emami-Pour were marked by chants including “I will kill, I will kill, whoever killed my brother.”
One clip recorded citizens pleading “Police force; support, support” during an attack on a hospital in Malekshahi, even as officers stormed the facility.
Day 9 brought a quieter map but a sharper political profile. In the footage published from eight cities and villages, three chants rose most clearly: “Long live the Shah,” “Death to the dictator,” and “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon; my life for Iran.”
In Chenar-Sheikh (Chenar Sofla), the biggest village in Hamedan province, protests continued, and one line that drew attention – “Khamenei is a murderer; in your dreams” – echoed a Persian-language comment posted by Elon Musk under one of Ali Khamenei’s posts on X.
Then, on the tenth day, the footage suggested renewed momentum. Protests were recorded across 19 cities, with the signature chants against "the dictator" and for Pahlavi leading the chorus.
In some campuses, students continued – sometimes with the simplest insistence of all: “Freedom, freedom, freedom”; sometimes with a pledge of endurance: “Don’t think it’s just today, our appointment is every day.”
Across the footage, one thing is constant: people are not only protesting, but naming an alternative.
The future of this latest round of unrest is not written. But another chapter in Iranians' journey towards an Iran without the Islamic Republic is being drafted, line by line - and in the open.
Iran may not be Venezuela, but the Islamic Republic may at its most vulnerable point in its near 50-year existence as pressure builds from the streets, foreign intelligence services and inside the clerical establishment, analysts told Iran International.
The question now confronting Washington is whether Donald Trump will stick to pressure and covert tools or move toward a more dramatic confrontation.
US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a daring, deadly raid over the weekend and launched a surprise attack on Iranian nuclear sites in June.
Drawing on that record, Dr. Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Vice Provost and Dean at Missouri University of Science and Technology and a longtime scholar of Iranian politics, described a president inclined toward targeted operations rather than large deployments.
Trump, he explained, “prefers low risk and no boots on the ground model of a surgical attack.”
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601072185
