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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — People in Iran’s capital shouted from their homes and rallied in the street Thursday night after a call by the country’s exiled crown prince for a mass demonstration, witnesses said, a new escalation in the protests that have spread nationwide across the Islamic Republic. Internet access and telephone lines in Iran cut out immediately after the protests began.

The protest represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Demonstrations have included cries in support of the shah, something that could bring a death sentence in the past but now underlines the anger fueling the protests that began over Iran’s ailing economy.

Thursday saw a continuation of the demonstrations that popped up in cities and rural towns across Iran on Wednesday. More markets and bazaars shut down in support of the protesters. So far, violence around the demonstrations has killed at least 41 people while more than 2,270 others have been detained, said the U.S.-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. CloudFlare, an internet firm, and the advocacy group NetBlocks reported the internet outage, both attributing it to Iranian government interference. Attempts to dial landlines and mobile phones from Dubai to Iran could not be connected. Such outages have in the past been followed by intense government crackdowns.

Meanwhile, the protests themselves have remained broadly leaderless. It remains unclear how Pahlavi’s call will affect the demonstrations moving forward.

“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 labor leader Lech Wałęsa 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.”

  • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.netEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    If you haven’t been accused of being a terrorist in 2026 you’re doing something wrong.

    What is the evidence she ordered people to be blown up? I didn’t see that skimming the article you linked.

    • perestroika@slrpnk.netEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      She’s leading them since 1985. They fought in the Iran-Iraq war. Gathered from Wikipedia.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Mojahedin_Organization_of_Iran

      From 1982 to 1988, despite the mounting casualties on both sides, the lingering underground presence of the MEK in Iran remained operational and went on to perform an average of sixty operations per week, resulting in assassinations of important Khomeini deputies.[159] The MEK came to be considered Iran’s “largest and most active Iranian exile organization”,[165][166][113] and its publications were commonly circulated within the Iranian diaspora.[167]

      …

      In 1987, it founded the “National Liberation Army of Iran” (NLA), with the sole objective of “toppling the Islamic Republic through military force from outside the country”.[57][58][59] During the Iran–Iraq War, the MEK then sided with Iraq, taking part in Operation Forty Stars,[60][61][62][57] and Operation Mersad.[63][64]

      …

      On 27 March 1988, the NLA launched its first military offensive against the Islamic Republic’s armed forces.[61] The NLA captured 600 square-kilometres of Islamic Republic territory and 508 soldiers from the Iranian 77th infantry division in Khuzestan Province.[173] The operation was named “Shining Sun”[60][61][62][57] (or “Operation Bright Sun”)[173] in which according to Massoud Rajavi, 2000 soldiers of the Islamic Republic were killed and $100 million worth of equipment was captured and exhibited for journalists.[173]

      …

      Operation Forty Stars was launched on June 18, 1988. With 530 aircraft sorties and heavy use of nerve gas, they attacked to the Iranian forces in the area around Mehran, killing or wounding 3,500 and nearly destroying a Revolutionary Guard division. The forces captured the city and took positions in the heights near Mehran, coming close to wiping the whole Iranian Pasdaran division and taking most of its equipment.[174] While some sources claim that Iraq participated in the operation,[175] the MEK and Baghdad said Iraqi soldiers did not take part.[176][177]

      …the crown prince is a fairly safe guy in comparison to both Maryam or Massoud Rajavi. However, I do not exclude that their organization is currently paving the way for him - in ways which would make Mossad faint. (I do hope they’ve stopped playing with chemical weapons, it’s badly out of fashion.)