Iran internet shutdown passes five days, Cloudflare says

Carried by some demonstrators from the earliest days of the unrest, it served as a visual rejection of the Islamic Republic’s theocratic rule.

But after exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi called on Iranians abroad to replace the Islamic Republic’s flag at embassies and consulates, the Lion and Sun moved to the center of Iran’s political narrative.

Even before that call, an Iranian protester climbed the wall of Iran's embassy in London to replace the official flag with the Lion and Sun. The footage spread rapidly online and was even shared by US President Donald Trump.

The act was repeated the following day, turning the embassy into a symbolic battleground over national identity.

Similar actions followed in Canberra, Stockholm, Oslo, Rome, Munich, Hamburg, and Ljubljana, where Iranians replaced official symbols, installed flags at entrances, or painted the Lion and Sun emblem and protest slogans on diplomatic buildings.

Videos from several cities inside Iran showed protesters carrying or displaying the Lion and Sun during demonstrations–an instant visual marker that a local protest was part of a broader national movement.

For many, the flag is less about monarchism and more about distancing themselves from the Islamic Republic. Its power lies in clarity. In a single image, it communicates rejection of the regime and identification with an alternative vision of Iran.

That efficiency has made it one of the most repeated visual motifs of the current unrest.

And that is perhaps why X also decided to change its Iran flag icon to the Lion and Sun.

The endurance of the tricolor

Iran’s green, white, and red tricolor was formalized during the Constitutional Revolution of the early 20th century, when the idea of a modern Iranian nation-state first took shape. Over time, the colors acquired widely accepted meanings: green for vitality and land, white for peace and clarity, red for courage and sacrifice.

What makes the tricolor distinctive is its continuity. It has survived monarchies, coups, revolutions, and war with minimal dispute. Across political divisions, it remained one of the few symbols broadly viewed as “Iranian” rather than “governmental.”

The Lion and Sun emblem is among Iran’s oldest political symbols. Its formal use dates back to the Safavid era and was standardized under the Qajars and later the Pahlavis as a lion holding a sword beneath a radiant sun.

In Iranian symbolism, the lion represents power, guardianship, and independence; the sun conveys enlightenment, sovereignty, and renewal. Together, they evoke a civilizational memory that predates the Islamic Republic.

This layered meaning explains why many Iranians view the emblem as representing Iran itself rather than a specific political system.

After 1979: a symbolic rupture

After the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic removed the Lion and Sun and replaced it with a new emblem built from stylized Islamic inscriptions.

The post-revolutionary clerical government viewed the Lion and Sun symbol as representing the "oppressive Westernising monarchy."

Over four decades of its placement on ministry façades, military uniforms, public buildings, textbooks, and state media, the emblem increasingly became seen as the “flag of the Islamic Republic” – not the “flag of Iran.”

This symbolic rupture explains why the Lion and Sun resurfaces during moments of crisis – from 2009 to 2019 to 2022, and now again. Its return in 2026 is simply its most visible resurgence.

Many leftists, republicans, and nationalists avoided it, wary of monarchist associations. This year’s protests have altered that calculus. The scale of unrest and the need for a non-regime symbol have softened ideological boundaries.

Many Iranians with no attachment to monarchy now carry the Lion and Sun as a marker of resistance, not restoration, as a symbol of “Iran without the Islamic Republic.”

In a moment of complete digital blackout, censorship and repression, symbols have again become the language of the street – durable, replicable, and difficult to silence.

Whether the lion and sun becomes a temporary emblem of a protest movement or a lasting symbol of a future political order remains one of the most consequential questions emerging from this year’s unrest.

Britain will bring forward legislation to impose further sanctions on Iran, the foreign secretary said on Tuesday in an update to parliament.

"Measures will target finance, energy, transport, software, and other significant industries which are advancing Iranian nuclear escalation," Yvette Cooper said.

Cooper added that Britain would work with the European Union and other partners to consider what additional steps may be needed in response to developments.

There is no internet. Only a few people still have access to Starlink, and even that works only in patches. Messages fail. Calls fail. Most of the time, there is nothing.

The killing has been unprecedented. I know that word is used too easily, so let me explain what I mean. Almost everyone you see or speak to knows a victim. I personally know five. One is dead. Two are injured. Two have been missing for three days.

The only time that comes close, in terms of scale and fear, was during Covid.

During the day, Tehran is mostly quiet. By around three in the afternoon, people start heading home. Some do it to prepare to go out again later. Others do it to stay out of everything entirely.

Mobile phones work during the day, but even then, they are limited. Text messages do not exist. The only messages that arrive are state “alerts,” which are really threats—warnings not to go out.

We are taken hostage. Literally. And without internet, our loved ones outside the country are taken hostage in a different way.

None of this was a surprise. They have done it before. Everyone knew there was a kill switch.

Which makes me ask something I cannot stop thinking about: how did the opposition outside, the activists, never think seriously about this? How do you call on people to risk their lives without even a rough plan for what happens once the security apparatus starts moving?

I am angry. At everything. At those who rule Iran. I have nothing but expletives for them. I wish them unimaginable suffering.

But I am also angry at the keyboard warriors abroad. “We will not rest until the regime is gone, no matter the cost,” one prominent figure said last week from a European capital. “F**k you, I say. With whose blood?"

Everyone I see is angry and helpless. Often both at once. People are conflicted. You want the butchers to be beaten. You want pressure from outside. But you do not want your country attacked. You do not want war.

Most people I speak to believe Trump will do something. No one knows what. There is hope, but there is more fear.

What if the blow only bruises the beast and makes it more savage, many ask. What if parts of the system refuse to give in and keep fighting and killing? We have seen this before. After the revolution 1979, there were years of power struggles and bloodshed.

And another thing, which some people outside may not want to hear.

Those who think that a change in leadership would mean none of this could happen again are either deeply mistaken or lying. No leader has universal support. Even Khomeini faced armed opposition after the revolution, both ideological and ethnic.

But then you say all of this, and immediately another question comes: what if nothing happens? What if there is no intervention, no turning point? How much longer can we go on like this?

All I can say—and I hope people read this—is that I don’t know. Like most people here, I don’t know.

And I don’t trust those who say they do. Those who declare from their chaise longues in London or Washington that the days or even the years ahead will be easy, clean and bright.

They won’t be.

Canada on Tuesday advised its citizens to leave Iran if they can do so safely and warned against all travel to the country.

“Avoid all travel to Iran due to ongoing nationwide demonstrations, tensions in the region, the high risk of arbitrary detention and the unpredictable enforcement of local laws,” the Canadian government said in updated travel advice published on January 13.

"Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price," Trump said in a post on his Truth Social account.

"I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA [Make Iran Great Again]!!!" he added.

Earlier on Tuesday, Iran International’s Editorial Board published a statement titled “The killing of 12,000 Iranians will not be buried in silence,” setting out its findings on the latest crackdown and calling for documents and testimony.