Iran’s nightly pro-state rallies become factional battleground

For critics of the government, the gatherings have long carried a message beyond support for Iran during the war: that the street belongs to supporters of the Islamic Republic.

Coming after the mass protests of January, critics have viewed their nightly presence as a form of intimidation and a way of denying public space to potential dissent. For many, the effect is more mundane but relentless: late-night loudspeakers, road closures and disruption to daily life.

But the rallies have increasingly taken on another function. Participants have chanted against Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, President Masoud Pezeshkian and former presidents Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Khatami.

Some gatherings have also featured demands for strict enforcement of Iran’s controversial hijab law, whose implementation has been held back following a decision by the Supreme National Security Council amid concerns over public backlash.

The shift has prompted warnings that gatherings promoted as demonstrations of national unity are becoming arenas for political score-settling.

The Supreme National Security Council-linked Nour News website described videos showing increasingly harsh slogans at recent gatherings as a “worrying shift in Iran’s political scene.”

“When street gatherings become a place for ‘death to’ and ‘down with’ slogans against domestic political figures, the first sign of a shift in the direction of popular reactions—from the foreign enemy to the domestic rival—becomes apparent,” Nour News wrote.

That shift is particularly significant because hardline media have portrayed the nightly gatherings as a measure of national opinion.

The hardline Hamshahri newspaper marked the 200th night with an article titled “200 Nights of Referendum,” presenting continued participation as an answer to politicians who have called for the public to be consulted over the country’s direction.

“Two hundred nights of participation in nighttime gatherings are a completely clear response to the doubts of some politicians who believe that the people should be consulted and a referendum held in order to continue the resistance,” it wrote.

The article was referring to Rouhani’s recent suggestion that continuing the war and confrontation with the United States and Western countries should be subject to consultation with the public.

The reformist Shargh newspaper warned that a social gathering that began in the name of “patriotism” could acquire a different meaning if it became a place for deciding “who has the right to speak about the country’s policies and who does not.”

Even the conservative daily Khorasan, considered close to Ghalibaf, called for a review of how the gatherings are organised in an article titled “200 Nights of Taking the Field.”

It questioned the use of the gatherings to promote hijab-related demands that it said exacerbate social divisions. It also highlighted complaints about the disruption the gatherings cause to residents and traffic.

“What image of these gatherings forms in citizens’ minds when the sound of loudspeakers keeps a sick person in a nearby home awake late into the night, or when hastily organized vehicle convoys create severe traffic jams and leave a driver exhausted after a day’s work stuck in traffic?” the newspaper asked.

Similar complaints have appeared on social media.

One X user urged supporters of the rallies to ask shopkeepers, residents and taxi drivers what they thought of the disruption, asking: “What has that taxi driver done to deserve sitting in traffic because of 30 government supporters?”

Another user, Morteza Rezazadeh, pointed to the changing targets of the slogans: from Israel and the United States to Iran’s president and parliament speaker. Mossad can “rest easy,” he quipped, because those chanting were doing its work for it.

After 200 consecutive nights, the dispute over the gatherings is therefore no longer simply about noise, traffic or even demonstrations of support for the state. It has become a dispute over who controls the street, who can claim to speak for the public and who inside the Islamic Republic is considered a legitimate political voice.

Instead, the latest speculation fits a pattern that has followed Pezeshkian since taking office in 2024: recurring calls for resignation or impeachment that intensify during periods of political, economic or geopolitical pressure.

The latest round was partly triggered by cryptic comments from Qom MP Mojtaba Zarei referring to a possible “coup” or coordinated political move against Pezeshkian.

Rouydad24 examined whether hardline networks, particularly Sharyan—the Persian acronym for the Strategic Network of Islamic Revolution Supporters—and allies of Saeed Jalili, Pezeshkian’s rival in the 2024 presidential election, were seeking early presidential elections.

The outlet presented no formal evidence of such a plan but pointed to repeated calls by radical lawmakers to invoke Article 89 of the Constitution, under which parliament can declare a president politically incompetent.

Mohsen Gharavian, a seminary and university lecturer, described the campaign to portray Pezeshkian as politically incompetent as a “targeted political conspiracy” and a soft “coup.”

Writing for Khabar Online, he argued that ultra-conservatives angered by their 2024 electoral defeat were using political networks and sustained media pressure to weaken the government.

In a separate Khabar Online report, moderate politician Hassan Rasouli criticised proposals to impeach Pezeshkian or transfer executive authority to First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref.

Rasouli said such moves, particularly amid heightened national security pressures, amounted to “a direct attack on high-level governance cohesion.” He dismissed comparisons with the 1981 removal of Iran’s first president, Abolhassan Banisadr, as political theatre rather than a serious legal pathway.

Threats to use parliament against sitting presidents have a long history in the Islamic Republic.

During Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s second term from 1993 to 1997, conservative opponents mounted sustained pressure on his government, including the impeachment of cabinet ministers.

Hassan Rouhani also faced repeated impeachment threats during his presidency, particularly from opponents of his diplomatic engagement with Washington.

The only successful precedent remains Banisadr in 1981. Parliament declared him politically incompetent during the Iran-Iraq war, after which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini formally dismissed him.

Banisadr’s removal has since become a recurring reference point in disputes over presidential authority. Hardline lawmakers have invoked his case in attacks on Pezeshkian, particularly over diplomacy, economic policy and the conduct of the war.

But invoking Article 89 and successfully removing a president are different things. There is currently no indication that Pezeshkian’s opponents have assembled the parliamentary support required to declare him politically incompetent.

Opposition to Pezeshkian has nevertheless persisted since he took office following Ebrahim Raisi’s death in 2024. Calls for his resignation, comparisons with Banisadr and threats to invoke Article 89 have resurfaced during periods of economic turmoil, currency volatility and war.

The repeated threat of impeachment can serve a political purpose even without enough votes to remove the president: keeping his competence under question and constraining his room for manoeuvre on economic and diplomatic policy.

This week’s talk of a “coup” and renewed debate over presidential competence therefore appears less a new escalation than the latest iteration of a political struggle that has accompanied Pezeshkian for much of his presidency.

Her arrest for “improper hijab” sparked the historic Woman, Life, Freedom movement, drawing women and men into the streets to demand an end to compulsory veiling and gender apartheid.

For many outside Iran, this seemed like a sudden eruption. But it was the continuation of a struggle that began long before 2022—and long before 1979.

Iran’s state-supported march toward women’s equality began in the early 20th century under Reza Shah, who ruled from 1925 to 1941 and believed modernization required women’s active participation in public life.

His 1936 decree compelling women to unveil—though heavy-handed—was a watershed moment, symbolizing women’s entry into civic life after centuries of seclusion.

Under the Pahlavi shahs, especially Mohammad Reza Shah, who ruled from 1941 to 1979, this state-led transformation expanded into education, political participation, family law and the workplace.

Modern schools for girls expanded dramatically, and by the late 1970s women made up a growing share of university students, entering specialized fields from medicine to engineering.

In 1963, Iranian women won the right to vote and run for office. Within a decade, women held seats in parliament, served as cabinet ministers and worked as judges. The Family Protection Laws of 1967, expanded significantly in 1975, curbed polygamy, raised the minimum marriage age and substantially expanded women’s rights in divorce and child custody.

By the late 1970s, women were increasingly visible as doctors, lawyers, executives, pilots and business leaders.

Together, these advances transformed the legal and social position of Iranian women and brought greater equality within reach.

That progressive trajectory ended abruptly in 1979. While Ayatollah Khomeini cloaked his takeover in the language of prosperity and liberation, he delivered a theocratic counter-revolution.

The Family Protection Laws were dismantled, female judges were removed from the bench, the minimum marriage age for girls was lowered, and compulsory veiling was progressively imposed.

Iranian women resisted almost immediately. In March 1979, thousands marched through the streets of Tehran against compulsory veiling. Yet the West, eager to believe Khomeini’s moderate diplomatic promises, looked away as women’s hard-won gains were rapidly erased.

The consequences of that original betrayal continue to shape Iran, though the Islamic Republic’s methods have changed dramatically. In recent years, state security networks have intensified enforcement through measures including the Noor Plan, which stepped up enforcement of compulsory hijab.

Street-level coercion has increasingly been supplemented by technology and punitive restrictions. Authorities have used surveillance cameras, heavy financial penalties and other restrictions against women who defy compulsory veiling.

Yet this expanding apparatus has failed to break the population’s resolve. The civil defiance that followed Mahsa Amini’s death helped lay the groundwork for subsequent protests that again shook the Islamic Republic.

As an immigration consultant in Canada, I speak to many Iranians seeking to leave Iran. Again and again, they tell me the same story: they want a future where their daughters can study freely, choose their own paths and live without fear.

The history of Iranian women’s struggle also carries a lesson for the outside world. In 1979, Western leaders mistook a theocratic revolution for a movement that would deliver greater political freedom. Today, the West risks repeating its mistakes if it prioritizes short-term “stability” or narrow regional de-escalation agreements over fundamental human rights.

Supporting Iranian women is not a matter of international charity. It is also a strategic question. A secular, free Iran could fundamentally reshape the political and security landscape of the Middle East, reducing the forces that have fuelled proxy warfare and threatened vital maritime routes.

Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said the meeting, scheduled for Monday in Salalah, was postponed “in the interests of consensus.” An Iranian Foreign Ministry official separately said the delay came at the request of “some regional countries,” while spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Saudi Arabia had sought the postponement because of developments in Yemen.

No new date has been announced for the meeting.

Baghaei described the planned gathering as an “opportunity” created by Iran and Oman and urged regional states not to let it slip away.

“I don’t think any responsible party would accept that we should lose this opportunity for any reason, whether because of outside interference or because of excuses that really have nothing to do with Iran, and that we should not hold this meeting,” he said Monday.

Several voices in Iran have gone further, explicitly accusing Washington of working to derail the initiative.

Fada-Hossein Maleki, a member of parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, told Tabnak that the United States had sought from the outset to prevent the Muscat process from taking shape or, if the meeting went ahead, to ensure Washington participated as a third party.

He said an Iran-Oman understanding on Hormuz could represent “another political defeat for the United States” because Washington had sought a role in arrangements concerning the strategic waterway, while Iran and Oman had pursued dialogue over its future management and shipping arrangements independently of Tehran-Washington negotiations.

Ali Gholhaki, an adviser to parliamentary speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, wrote on X that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates had obstructed the Oman meeting, but said “the main actor behind the cancellation of this meeting is America!”

International affairs analyst Mir-Ghasem Momeni offered a similar interpretation, telling ILNA that the postponement was aimed at increasing pressure on Iran and extracting further concessions.

“This is a scenario designed by the Americans, with Saudi Arabia and other countries carrying it out,” he said.

Saudi concerns offer another explanation

Saudi Arabia’s request came amid mounting tensions over Yemen and attacks on its energy infrastructure, providing a more immediate explanation for Riyadh’s reluctance to proceed with the talks.

The Houthis have stepped up pressure on Saudi Arabia amid fighting in Yemen, while attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure have added to concerns over the security of alternative export routes as traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted.

Hardline Kayhan newspaper nevertheless alleged that Saudi Arabia had used the recent escalation involving the Houthis and attacks on Saudi infrastructure as a pretext to derail the planned meeting.

The Javan newspaper, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), sought to connect Riyadh’s position more directly to Washington, pointing to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s meeting with US Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper on Monday as evidence of what it described as US-Saudi coordination against the talks.

The meeting took place after Oman announced the postponement on Sunday night, however, and there is no public evidence linking Cooper’s visit to the decision to delay the Salalah gathering. Saudi state media said Mohammed bin Salman and Cooper discussed bilateral relations and the latest regional developments.

Limits of regional diplomacy

Some Iranian analysts have interpreted the postponement as evidence of a broader problem with attempts to resolve the Hormuz crisis solely through regional diplomacy.

Momeni argued that Washington retained enough influence over Persian Gulf Arab states to prevent them from reaching an independent arrangement with Tehran.

“The solution to the Strait of Hormuz problem is not an agreement between Iran and the Arab countries, but an agreement between Iran and the United States,” he said.

Political analyst Rahman Ghahramanpour wrote on X that the postponement was a sign of President Donald Trump’s reluctance to revive the Islamabad framework and his preference for designing a new framework that would simultaneously address the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the nuclear issue.

International relations professor Mohsen Jalilvand told Fararu that it had been clear from the outset that the meeting either would not take place or would fail to produce a tangible outcome because the principal parties to the conflict, particularly the United States and Israel, were absent from the negotiating table.

Jalilvand said that if the objective was to establish a durable mechanism for managing transit through the Strait of Hormuz, parties with genuine deterrent capabilities and the power to enforce an agreement would have to participate.

“Otherwise, regional treaties alone cannot provide a strong security guarantee for changing the current situation,” he said.

He added that the significance of the Oman meeting lay not simply in whether it was held, but in what its postponement revealed about the limits of regional diplomacy.

Opposition inside Iran

Not all criticism inside Iran has focused on why the meeting was postponed.

Kayhan editor Hossein Shariatmadari, a strong opponent of the understanding with Oman, has argued that the proposed arrangement amounts to giving the United States “a breathing space” and that Iran should not negotiate with other Persian Gulf countries over reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

In a Monday commentary, Shariatmadari sharply criticized the decision to invite other Persian Gulf states to the meeting, accusing them of protecting US and Israeli interests.

“As long as they have not paid the price for supporting the crimes of America and Israel and have not been punished, they should have no role or presence whatsoever in the decision-making of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he wrote.

The findings are contained in a new joint report by Human Rights Watch and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran examining executions following the nationwide protests that erupted in late 2025 and January 2026.

Between March 18 and the end of August, Iranian authorities announced the executions of 29 people arrested in connection with the protests. Several were just 18 or 19 years old, and five were executed in public.

In 16 cases, authorities did not allege that the defendants had killed anyone. Instead, young protesters have been executed over allegations including setting fire to buildings or vehicles, possessing or using Molotov cocktails, entering or damaging government buildings, throwing stones and blocking streets.

The organizations say the speed with which some defendants have gone from arrest to execution has been extraordinary.

Saleh Mohammadi, a 19-year-old wrestling champion, was executed about five weeks after his arrest. Amir Hossein Hatami, 18, was executed 84 days after his arrest.

Sasan Azadvar Jonaqani, a 21-year-old karate champion, was arrested, convicted and executed in under four months. Authorities accused him of acts including breaking the windows of a police bus with stones and a baton.

‘War against God’

The executions mark a new phase in the crackdown that followed the January protests, when Iranian authorities killed thousands and detained tens of thousands as they sought to suppress the unrest.

Human Rights Watch and the Boroumand Center found that at least 59 men were executed during the same period on what they described as politically motivated and vaguely defined national security charges following grossly unfair trials.

At least three had reportedly been arrested in connection with the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

Iranian courts have relied heavily on broadly defined capital offenses including “waging war against God” and “corruption on earth.”

Human Rights Watch and the Boroumand Center said those charges have allowed courts to impose death sentences without establishing that defendants were responsible for intentional killings.

‘Helping hostile states’

The report also points to Iran's 2025 Espionage Law as an increasingly important tool in protest-related prosecutions.

At least eight protesters executed following the recent demonstrations were convicted under the law, which expanded the range of conduct punishable as cooperation with “hostile states” and provides for expedited proceedings.

It can also impose lengthy prison terms for sending footage, images or information to foreign media, citizen journalists or foreign social media pages when authorities deem the activity contrary to national security.

‘Torture, forced confessions’

Human Rights Watch and the Boroumand Center documented defendants being denied independent lawyers of their choosing and courts relying on confessions allegedly extracted through torture, as well as unsubstantiated reports from security and intelligence agencies.

Detainees were allegedly beaten, subjected to electric shocks and mock executions, held for prolonged periods in solitary confinement and threatened with sexual violence against themselves or family members.

Some defendants later retracted their confessions in court and said they had been tortured. The report says authorities failed to investigate those allegations.

The organizations also documented the use of televised confessions before cases had concluded.

In one recording broadcast by state media, an interrogator told 18-year-old Shervin Bagherian that he was accused of “waging war against God.”

Bagherian appeared not to know what the charge meant. When the interrogator told him it meant execution, the teenager pleaded not to be put to death.

Public hangings

The report places particular emphasis on the return of public executions in protest-related cases, which the organizations say is intended to instill fear in the wider population.

On July 28, authorities executed Abolfazl Sepahi and Amir Hossein Safari in Alikhani Square in Isfahan, where four members of the security forces were reported killed during protests on January 8.

Three other men — Saleh Mohammadi, Saeed Davoudi and Mehdi Ghasemi — were executed in March “in the presence of a group of people in Qom,” according to the judiciary's Mizan news agency, language the report says indicated a public execution.

Scores could be next

Scores of protesters and political dissidents, including women and children, remain at risk of execution, according to the report.

Amnesty International said in July that it had identified 60 people, including three children, at risk of execution in connection with protests. Iran Human Rights has reported that more than 70 protesters were at risk in Isfahan Prison alone.

The actual number could be substantially higher.

Among those who could still be executed is 26-year-old mixed martial arts fighter and kickboxer Benyamin Naghdi.

A revolutionary court in Shiraz sentenced Naghdi to death for “corruption on earth” after accusing him of using a fire extinguisher as a makeshift flamethrower against security forces riding motorcycles during protests on January 3.

His lawyer, Mostafa Nili, said prosecutors initially accused Naghdi of attempted murder but later dropped charges related to bodily injury. Nili said no one was injured.

Nevertheless, the court concluded that the remaining allegations collectively amounted to “corruption on earth,” and Iran's Supreme Court upheld Naghdi's death sentence in July, according to the report.

Lawyers taking protest-related cases have also faced threats of arrest, while the Boroumand Center documented the arrests of at least 19 lawyers in the month following the January crackdown. Others have faced renewed prosecution or disbarment.

Human Rights Watch and the Boroumand Center describe the campaign as the “weaponization of the death penalty” in the aftermath of the January crackdown, intended to instill fear and deter further dissent.