Protesters rally in Barcelona in solidarity with demonstrations in Iran

The project aims to build a national network on a Huawei-based platform, doing work similar to services provided by Iranian cloud firm ArvanCloud (Abr Arvan) but on a far larger scale, the information said.

It is intended to host widely used public services as well as banking and payment platforms and other critical infrastructure.

Huawei did not respond to Iran International’s request for comment.

According to the information, the project is in its final stages and is being brought online under ArvanCloud’s management, through a company called Ayandeh Afzay-e Karaneh.

The project is linked to individuals and companies under US sanctions, including Fanap and its CEO Shahab Javanmardi – sanctioned by the US Treasury in August over alleged ties to Iran’s intelligence ministry and the Revolutionary Guards.

Sources said Huawei supplied the required equipment covertly, and the company’s name does not appear in related documentation.

President Masoud Pezeshkian visited the construction site of the project in March 2025. According to the sources, China’s ambassador also visited the project.

Sources said the project is estimated to cost between $700 million and $1 billion, and that all equipment – supplied by Huawei in China – entered Iran after the 12-day war, shipped in 24 containers.

Sources said the data center would have capacity for about 400 server racks and would incorporate ArvanCloud, with much of the country’s core digital infrastructure eventually moved to the site.

They said the data center is located beneath Fanap’s administrative building in Pardis IT Town, about 20 kilometers northeast of Tehran, in a place designed to be difficult to strike by missile.

Blackout continues

Iran has remained under sweeping internet and phone disruptions as protests continue, limiting reporting on casualties, according to rights groups and internet monitors.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said he was deeply disturbed by reports of violence during nationwide protests and expressed concern about internet and communications shutdowns, calling on authorities to restore access.

NetBlocks said on Wednesday that Iran remained largely offline as the nationwide blackout passed its 132nd hour, adding that limited connectivity was obscuring the scale of casualties.

Fars news agency, which is affiliated with the IRGC, argued that internet restrictions should continue as protests persist, linking the limits to what it described as security concerns.

Iran International has reported that, amid the communications shutdown, particularly on January 7 and 8, at least 12,000 protesters were killed.

Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said decisions on internet and phone cuts were outside the control of government ministries in a security situation.

Demonstrators gathered in London on January 13 in a rally in support of the national uprising back home.

Iranian authorities on Wednesday published a list of cafes and shopping malls that they said had supported recent protests, sharing screenshots of what they described as the businesses’ social media activity.

The list was released for what officials said was the attention of judicial and security bodies.

Earlier, Iran’s prosecutor general said law enforcement agencies must identify and seize the assets of those involved in the unrest.

German lawmaker Norbert Rottgen said on Wednesday that many Iranians felt abandoned by Europe during the "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests four years ago, and that Europe must now take visible action and stand clearly with the people of Iran.

"That is why we must now act visibly and stand clearly at the side of the people in Iran," Rottgen wrote on X.

Revolutions differ from episodic unrest not by the scale of any single demonstration, but by their structure and direction. They are sustained rather than spontaneous; cumulative rather than cathartic. Their power lies in endurance, in the gradual erosion of legitimacy, authority, and administrative control, until the system itself becomes untenable.

Compared with past protest waves, the current unrest appears more nationally synchronised, socially broad, and symbolically convergent. Equally significant is the re-emergence of a shared national language of opposition that Tehran has long sought to crush through ideology, patronage, and repression.

This matters because revolutions do not target the security apparatus alone. They strike at the regime’s ability to govern routinely. A state under revolutionary pressure must deploy coercion continuously rather than episodically. That is costly, exhausting, and politically corrosive.

Iranian police have circulated text messages warning families to keep young people and teenagers at home, citing the alleged presence of “terrorist groups” and armed individuals at demonstrations and threatening decisive action. The author has independently verified these messages.

Such warnings are not merely informational; they are designed to shift responsibility for state violence onto families themselves.

Yet repression alone does not explain the regime’s present fragility. For much of its rule, governance in the Islamic Republic has been hollowed out by a deeply entrenched kleptocratic system, in which political authority, security power, and economic privilege are fused.

Years of sanctions, chronic inflation, currency collapse, and fiscal mismanagement have hollowed out state capacity. Recent military setbacks have compounded internal strain. The result is a regime increasingly reliant on force at a moment when its economic and institutional resilience is at its weakest.

Mass killing

Iran International reported on Tuesday that at least 12,000 people had been killed in the recent protests, describing the crackdown as “the largest killing in Iran’s contemporary history.”

The emerging scale of violence therefore places Iran’s crisis under increasing strain within the framework of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P). When a state is credibly accused of mass killing, collective punishment, and systematic efforts to conceal casualties, its claim to sovereign non-intervention comes under acute pressure.

R2P does not mandate automatic military action, but it does impose an obligation on the international community to consider diplomatic, economic, legal, and—if atrocities escalate further—coercive measures.

In this sense, the internationalisation of Iran’s crisis would be the consequence of Tehran's own conduct, not foreign imposition.

In 2011, the UN Security Council invoked the Responsibility to Protect in Libya when the Gaddafi regime threatened mass atrocities during the Arab Spring. Western alliances have acted to prevent large-scale civilian harm even in the absence of an explicit UN mandate.

From Bosnia and Kosovo during the wars of the former Yugoslavia to Sierra Leone and parts of the Sahel, the underlying logic has been consistent: when states engage in or enable mass violence against civilians, sovereignty ceases to function as an absolute shield.

Trump’s intervention

It is in this context that US President Donald Trump’s increasingly explicit warnings to the Islamic Republic should be understood.

Earlier today, Trump issued a direct message to Iranian protesters on Truth Social, urging them to “KEEP PROTESTING–TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS,” announcing that he has cancelled all meetings with Iranian officials, and declaring that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY” if the killing of protesters does not stop.

This marks a notable escalation in both tone and signalling.

Trump has now repeatedly framed continued repression as a red line, stating that the United States will not tolerate mass killings of civilians.

It is unlikely that US planners would ignore the lessons of Israel’s recent 12-day campaign against Iran, a campaign in which American forces ultimately participated and which demonstrated both the reach and the limits of strikes narrowly focused on infrastructure.

Any strategy under consideration would likely be shaped less by symbolic targets than by the regime’s security architecture itself: the institutions, decision-making structures, and coercive networks that sustain repression.

Whether such pressure remains declaratory or translates into action, the signal is unmistakable: the regime’s own conduct has pushed the crisis beyond routine diplomacy and into active contingency planning.

Change in strategic terrain

The comparison most often drawn is with 2009. But the analogy is misleading.

The Green Movement was largely urban, middle-class, and procedural in its demands. It challenged an election outcome, not the foundational legitimacy of the system itself. The current movement contests the regime’s right to rule altogether.

Nor does this moment resemble many leaderless uprisings of the past century, which fractured under pressure or collapsed into ideological ambiguity. What distinguishes the present phase is the growing convergence around a figure and a direction.

Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah—whose reign ended in February 1979 following the revolution led by Ruhollah Khomeini—appears to be functioning, through popular recognition rather than formal appointment, as a focal point for disparate strands of opposition.

Whatever one’s view of monarchy, the presence of an identifiable political centre of gravity marks an important departure from previous cycles of unrest.

For now, the Islamic Republic retains formidable coercive capacity. Revolution does not guarantee swift collapse. What it does guarantee is a change in the strategic terrain.

The question is no longer whether the regime can suppress protests tonight, but whether it can sustain governance tomorrow, next month, or next year under unrelenting strain.