Huge crowds of protesters marched in Iran’s capital and other cities, videos show, in what is seen as the biggest show of force by opponents of the religious establishment in years.
Peaceful protests in Tehran and the second city of Mashhad on Thursday evening, which were not dispersed by security forces, can be seen in footage verified by BBC Persian.
Later, a monitoring group reported a nationwide internet outage.
Protesters can be heard in footage calling for the overthrow of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the return of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the former Shah, who had urged his supporters to take to the streets.
It was the 12th straight day of unrest sparked by anger over Iran’s currency collapse and which has spread to more than 100 cities and towns across Iran’s 31 provinces, according to human rights groups.
The US-based Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) said at least 34 protesters – including five children – and eight members of the security forces were killed, and another 2,270 protesters were arrested.
Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) said at least 45 protesters, including eight children, were killed by security forces.
The Persian BBC confirmed the deaths and identities of 22 people, while Iranian authorities reported the deaths of six members of the security forces.
Thursday evening, Videos posted on social media and verified by BBC Persian showed a large crowd of protesters moving along a main road in Mashhadin the northeast of the country.
The chants of “Long live the Shah” and “This is the final battle!” Pahlavi will return” can be heard. And at one point, several men are seen climbing onto an overpass and removing what appear to be surveillance cameras attached to it.
In footage sent to the Persian BBC from the north of the capital, another large crowd is heard chanting “This is the final battle! Pahlavi will return”. Elsewhere in the north, protesters were filmed shouting “Dishonorable” and “Don’t be afraid, we are all in this together” following a clash with security forces.
Other videos showed Protesters chanted “Death to the dictator” – a reference to Khamenei – in the central city of Isfahan; “Long live the Shah” in the northern town of Babol, and “Don’t be afraid, we are all in this together” in the city of Tabriz, in the northwest of the country.
In the western town of Dezful, footage sent to the Persian BBC showed a large crowd of protesters and security personnel appear to open fire from a central square.
The evening protests took place shortly after Reza Pahlavi, whose father was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution and lives in Washington DC, called on Iranians to “take to the streets and, as a united front, shout out their demands”.
Iranian state media downplayed the scale of Thursday’s unrest. In some cases, they denied the existence of protests, posting videos of empty streets.
Meanwhile, internet watchdog NetBlocks said its measurements showed Iran was “in the midst of a nationwide internet blackout.”
“The incident follows a series of escalating digital censorship measures targeting protests across the country and hampering the public’s right to communicate at a critical time,” he warned, referring to previous losses of connectivity in several cities.
Earlier today, Footage from Lomar, a small town in the western province of Ilam, shows a crowd chanting “Guns, tanks, fireworks, the mullahs must go.” – a reference to the clerical establishment. Another shows people throwing papers into the air outside a bank that appeared to have been robbed.
Other videos showed many stores closed in a number of predominantly Kurdish towns and villages in Ilam, as well as in the provinces of Kermanshah and Lorestan.
The move followed a call for a general strike by exiled Kurdish opposition groups in response to the deadly crackdown on protests in the region.
At least 17 protesters were killed by security forces in Ilam, Kermanshah and Lorestan during the unrest, and many of them were members of the Kurdish or Lor ethnic minorities, according to the Kurdish human rights group Hengaw.
On Wednesday, violent clashes took place between protesters and security forces in several cities in western Iran, as well as in other regions.
IHR said it was the deadliest day of the unrest, with 13 protesters confirmed to have been killed across the country.
“Evidence shows that the scale of the repression is becoming more violent and widespread every day,” said the group’s director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.
Hengaw said two protesters were shot dead by security forces in Khoshk-e Bijar in the northern province of Gilan on Wednesday evening.
Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency, close to the Revolutionary Guards, reported that three police officers were also killed on Wednesday.
Two of them were shot dead by armed individuals among a group of “rioters” in the southwestern town of Lordegan, and the third was stabbed to death “during efforts to control the unrest” in the country of Malard, west of Tehran.
XOn Thursday, US President Donald Trump reiterated his threat to intervene militarily if Iranian authorities killed protesters.
“I let them know that if they start killing people, which they tend to do in their riots – they have a lot of riots – if they do that, we’re going to hit them very hard,” he said in an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian earlier called on security forces to exercise “utmost restraint” in handling peaceful protests. “Any violent or coercive behavior must be avoided,” a statement said.
Khamenei – who holds ultimate power in Iran – said on Saturday that authorities should “talk with the protesters” but that “the rioters should be put in their place”.
The protests began on December 28, when traders took to the streets of Tehran to express their anger over another sharp fall in the value of the Iranian currency, the rial, against the US dollar on the open market.
The rial has fallen to a record low over the past year and inflation has soared to 40% as sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program weigh on an economy also weakened by government mismanagement and corruption.
University students quickly joined the protests and they began to spread to other cities, with crowds frequently heard chanting slogans critical of the religious establishment.
In messages sent to the BBC, through a UK-based activist, a Tehran woman said desperation was driving the protests.
“We live in limbo,” she said. “I feel like I’m suspended in mid-air, with no wings to migrate or hope of pursuing my goals here. Life here has become unbearable.”
Another said she was protesting because her dreams had been “stolen” by the religious establishment and she wanted it to be known that “we still have a voice to shout, a fist to punch them in the face.”
A woman in the western town of Ilam said she knew of young people from establishment-affiliated families who were participating in the protests. “My friend and her three sisters, whose father is a well-known figure in the intelligence services, joined the group without their father’s knowledge,” she explained.
These protests are the most widespread since the 2022 uprising sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman arrested by morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly. More than 550 people were killed and 20,000 detained by security forces for several months, according to human rights groups.
The largest protests since the Islamic Revolution took place in 2009, when millions of Iranians took to the streets of major cities after a disputed presidential election. Dozens of opposition supporters were killed and thousands arrested in the ensuing crackdown.
