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.”
This presents the same problem as with Venezuela and Syria: sure, they need to change, but if they open up now and let themselves be steered by the trampist US, they’re just going to end up as an experimental ancapistan hellhole, like with russia when guided by Reagan’s “advisors”.
Iran is not Venezuela or Syria. The people have been suffering under this regime since 1979. They are angry and empowered. They will collectively trust the Shah, at least temporarily, if he means the end of the regime. Let Trump try to meddle like in Venezuela; Iranians will ultimately expel him. Iran is ready to be liberated.
If you think the Shah will be any better than the ayatollah then you are a fool.
The positive thing in this mess seems to be: the crown prince has never ruled as a shah. His father ruled, did commit outrageous crimes to suppress opposition - and fled the revoltion.
Outwardly, the crown prince appears to be a liberal democrat by persuasion.
Game theoretically, he is currently in the “strongest challenger to the tyrant” role, and even those who don’t want a kingdom, are likely OK with him for a little while.
Reminds me a bit of how a prince inherited Spain from Franco. The prince in question dismantled the system and they created a democratic monarchy.
He also turned out to be corrupt and shitty, but at least he was not a ruler of the country, so I guess we can expect something good to happen, after all
I mean his only qualification for leadership is he’s a prince. If you can’t see that alone is a risk of reinstating monarchy I don’t know what to tell you.
Surely there is a better option, someone who as actually done leadership work on the ground in Iran, not just spend his whole life whining about his birthright and being a tool for fascists.
If there were an option who has “done leadership in Iran,” that person would be part of the current regime. Any potential grassroots leaders have been exiled.
This rhetoric that “surely there’s a better [hypothetical] option” is the sort of perfectionism and ideological purism that dooms so many movements. Keep waiting for a hypothetical “better option,” you might as well be waiting for a messiah.
The practical reality is that the crown prince is a figurehead that the liberation movement can rally around, and indeed they are rallying to his call. That alone makes him the best available option, as the momentum being generated is what’s critical. To say “wait, why don’t we wait for someone better to come along” only helps the ayatollah.
It’s totally ridiculous to suggest that there are no leaders remaining in a country of almost 100 million. There surely religious figures, protest organizers, local heads of community, literally anyone would be better than a monarch. Or if there is truly no one then I have to believe a better exile exists who is not so clearly a Western puppet and with the same toxic baggage. Or, worst case, let there be no singular leader. The protestors can choose delegates for a council of leadership. Even no experience is better than such a dangerous outsider.
There no point in overthrowing the government if what replaces it will be no better.
This comment thread is literally on an article about people in Iran rallying to his call for a mass demonstration. Read the room.
Are you in Iran right now, participating in their protests? Cause if not, you have no right to tell them who they should or shouldn’t follow. That’s your own unexamined colonizer mindset showing.
Keep waiting for your perfect leader, but the Iranian people are moving on without you.
Dude fuck off. Obviously they can do what they want. I’m just explaining why it’s a bad idea. Neither of what we think matters, it’s for Iranians to decide how they want to handle this. But if I were them, I’d pick literally anyone else.
There is a second person, but she lives abroad too, and is considered the leader of a terrorist organization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Rajavi
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.