Iran cannot simply rewind to the weeks before the protests began. The crackdown hardened public anger, while an already overstretched economy and energy system lost what little room they had to absorb another shock.
More than 36,500 Iranians were killed by security forces during the January 8-9 crackdown on nationwide protests, making it the deadliest two-day protest massacre in history, according to documents reviewed by Iran International's Editorial Board.
An independent research group said on Saturday it had identified a large, coordinated social media influence operation it linked to the Islamic Republic, aimed at shaping global narratives and suppressing dissent during the country’s uprising.
Iran’s state broadcaster has reached a point where control no longer translates into attention, exposing how years of manipulation, omission and distrust have hollowed out its authority and left a system that still fills airtime but is no longer watched.
Cryptocurrency is a rare tool embraced by both Iran’s rulers and its citizens—used at the top to enrich elites to dodge sanctions and at the bottom to survive the economic devastation wrought by their policies.
Emory University has dismissed Fatemeh Ardeshir Larijani, the daughter of the US-sanctioned security chief of the Islamic Republic, the university confirmed to Iran International on Saturday, following growing calls for her removal.
After unprecedented mass killings of protestors whose full scope lies concealed behind Iran's internet iron curtain, the Washington-based pro-Israel think tank JINSA urges Donald Trump to seize the moment to destroy the mutual foe of Israel and the United States.
Tehran’s increasingly combative official statements suggest its leaders may be taking US military deployments more seriously than Washington’s signals of diplomacy.
US conservative commentator Mark Levin told Iran International on Thursday that Iran has effectively become a “concentration camp” amid a deadly crackdown on protests, urging the United States to act to help topple the Islamic Republic.
Iranian security forces deployed unknown chemical substances amid deadly crackdowns on protestors in several cities earlier this month, eyewitnesses told Iran International, causing severe breathing problems and burning pain.
US officials told Iraqi leaders Washington would starve Baghdad of oil revenue if it kept up economic links with Iran and would suspend ties if politicians deemed close to Iran became ministers, Reuters reported on Friday citing sources.
The US Treasury on Friday slapped new sanctions on ships and their owners it accuses of enriching the Iranian state and fueling its repression following mass killings of protestors earlier this month.
One year after US President Donald Trump returned to the White House and revived the "maximum pressure" sanctions on Iran from his first term, available data show the country’s energy exports remain largely intact.
A wounded Iranian protester played dead inside a plastic body bag for three days to hide from security forces and heard what he believed to be fellow protestors being summarily executed, a rights group reported on Thursday.
Russia likely views Iran’s mass anti-regime protests with deep unease, but may ultimately adapt just as it did in Syria to preserve influence whether the Islamic Republic survives or a new political order emerges.
Tehran may have crushed street unrest with brute force, but it has no comparable solution for an economy gripped by surging inflation and collapsing incomes.
The protests that erupted across Iran in January 2026 may have appeared sudden to outside observers but inside the country, they were anything but.
Professor Emeritus of Government and Politics, George Mason University
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
Iran International
I am writing this from Tehran after three days of trying to find a way to send it: things may get a lot worse before they get any better.
There is a cruel ritual in Iranian opposition politics: some voices abroad constantly interrogate the “purity” of activists inside—why they did not speak more sharply or endorse maximalist slogans, why survival itself looks insufficiently heroic.
