The Protests of Late 2025 and January 2026

The protests of late 2025 and January 2026 began on 28 December 2025, when shopkeepers in Tehran closed their businesses over the collapse of the rial, and grew within days into a nationwide movement against the Islamic Republic. The crackdown that followed, concentrated on the nights of 8 and 9 January 2026 under an internet blackout, was the deadliest in Iran since the 1979 revolution: the government put the dead at 3,117, while rights groups and UN experts said the true toll was far higher.

An economy under strain

By the end of 2025 Iranians were living with inflation of around 40 per cent, a currency that kept losing value and repeated shortages of electricity and water. The country had just been through the Twelve-Day War with Israel and the United States in June, and in September 2025 UN sanctions were restored, adding to the American measures already in place (see sanctions on Iran). For ordinary families the result was simple: wages bought less every month. For the background on the currency, see the rial and the toman.

From the bazaar to the provinces

The first protests, on Sunday 28 December 2025, were by shopkeepers and traders in Tehran angry at the government’s handling of the currency slide. The bazaar has a long political history in Iran: merchants’ strikes helped bring down the shah in 1978. Within two days students at at least ten universities had joined, and protests spread to provincial towns.

The first deaths were reported on 31 December and 1 January. The semi-official Fars news agency said three people were killed in Azna in Lorestan province and two in Lordegan in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, and state television said a 21-year-old member of the Basij militia had been killed in Kouhdasht. President Masoud Pezeshkian at first struck a conciliatory tone, saying the protesters had legitimate demands about living costs, and the government offered dialogue.

8 and 9 January: the blackout and the killings

The slogans soon moved beyond prices to the political system and the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Many reports linked the sharp escalation on 8 January to a call by the exiled Reza Pahlavi, son of the last shah, for coordinated protests. That day the authorities cut internet and telephone services across the country, in what the Associated Press later described as the most comprehensive internet blackout in Iran’s history.

Under the blackout, security forces opened fire on crowds in Tehran and many other cities. Most of the killing, according to the UN and human rights organisations, took place on the nights of 8 and 9 January. Witnesses and medical staff who later reached foreign media described overwhelmed hospitals, morgues full of bodies and families pressed to bury their dead quickly. The Iranian government acknowledged that people had died but blamed armed “terrorists” and “rioters” that it said were trained and funded by the United States and Israel.

Counting the dead

Because of the blackout, no figure has been independently verified, and the estimates differ by a factor of ten:

• Iranian government: 3,117 dead, announced in January 2026. Officials said 2,427 of them were civilians and security personnel and the rest were “terrorists”.
• HRANA (Human Rights Activists News Agency, US-based): 5,137 deaths confirmed by 23 January, with more than 12,000 further cases under review; more than 6,000 confirmed by 27 January. It also counted more than 27,600 people detained.
• UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Mai Sato: said the toll could reach 20,000 or more, based on reports from doctors inside Iran.
• Medical networks: a group of more than 80 health workers in 12 provinces told the Guardian that, compared with normal hospital figures, the toll could exceed 30,000.

Reactions abroad

On 23 January 2026 the UN Human Rights Council, meeting in emergency session in Geneva, adopted a resolution condemning the “violent crackdown on peaceful protests”, by 25 votes to 7 with 14 abstentions; China, India and Pakistan voted against. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, told the council that the brutality was continuing. Iran’s envoy rejected the resolution and accused Western governments of hypocrisy, pointing to the damage done by their sanctions.

US President Donald Trump threatened action over the killings and ordered naval forces towards Iran, and later claimed that Iran had called off the executions of hundreds of detainees, a claim Iran’s top prosecutor denied. Iran accused Washington of using the protests as a pretext for regime change.

Trials and executions

The head of the judiciary promised swift trials for those arrested. From March 2026 the authorities began executing people convicted in connection with the unrest, including a man convicted of killing a policeman, according to Reuters. Iran Human Rights, an Oslo-based group, said executions had surged in 2026, and Amnesty International said dozens of protesters faced the death penalty.

What came next

The protests were followed within weeks by war. When the United States and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February 2026, President Trump listed the killing of protesters among his reasons and urged Iranians to “take back” their country; Iranian officials called this proof that the unrest had been foreign-backed. The war, the killing of Ali Khamenei and the long blackout overshadowed the movement, but the January killings remain central to how many Iranians view the state. Earlier waves are covered on the protests of 2017 to 2019 and “Woman, Life, Freedom” in 2022.

This page describes events up to May 2026.