Anti-Khameini protest spreads across Iran

Protests in Iran sparked by economic woes have now gone nationwide in the Islamic Republic, activists said on Thursday, signalling both their staying power and intensity as they challenge the country’s theocracy.
Wednesday saw the most intense day of demonstrations, reaching rural towns and major cities in every province, though still localised enough for daily life to continue in Tehran, Iran’s capital, and elsewhere. So far, violence around the demonstrations has killed at least 38 people while more than 2,200 others have been detained, said the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
The growth of the protests increases the pressure on Iran’s civilian government and its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. So far, authorities haven’t shut down the internet or fully flooded the streets with security forces like they did to put down the 2022 Mahsa Amini demonstrations. But any intensification may seem to act.
Meanwhile, the protests themselves have remained broadly leaderless, though a call for protests by Iran’s exiled crown prince will test whether or not demonstrators are being swayed by messages from abroad.
“The lack of a viable alternative has undermined past protests in Iran,” wrote Nate Swanson of the Washington-based Atlantic Council, who studies Iran.
“There may be a thousand Iranian dissident activists who, given a chance, could emerge as respected statesmen, as labour leader Lech Walesa did in Poland at the end of the Cold War. But so far, the Iranian security apparatus has arrested, persecuted and exiled all of the country’s potential transformational leaders.”
On Wednesday, at least 37 protests took place across the country, activists said. They included Shiraz, where online videos purported to show an anti-riot truck using a water cannon to target demonstrators. The state-run IRNA news agency, which has largely been silent about the demonstrations, reported on a mass demonstration in Bojnourd, as well as demonstrations in Kerman and Kermanshah.
Iranian officials have offered no acknowledgement of the scale of the protests. However, there have been reports regarding security officials being hurt or killed.
Demonstrations continued on Thursday, with merchants closing their shops in Iran’s Kurdistan province. It remains unclear why Iranian officials have yet to crack down harder on the demonstrators. US President Donald Trump warned last week that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” America will come to their rescue.”
Trump’s comments drew a new rebuke from Iran’s Foreign Ministry. But those comments haven’t stopped the US State Department on the social platform X from highlighting online footage purporting to show demonstrators putting up stickers naming roads after Trump or throwing away government-subsidised rice.