Between late December and mid-January, Iran witnessed yet another wave of mass protests across hundreds of cities nationwide. Increased frustration over the skyrocketing prices of basic goods eventually led to mass calls for the removal of the country’s autocratic clerical leaders. The protests over the course of three nights in early January reportedly led to the deaths of thousands of Iranians at the hands of security forces, with estimates ranging from 6,000 to over 30,000 killed.
Following reports of the police violence, President Donald Trump deployed Naval forces to the region and confirmed Friday that more are en route. The U.S. State Department has advised Americans to leave the country. Meanwhile, support for citizen protesters continues abroad. Echoing Trump this past weekend, the exiled Crown Prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, who fled the country during the Islamic Revolution in 1979, called for regime change and “a global day of action.” On Saturday, 250,000 people assembled in Munich alone, with protests also unfolding in Los Angeles and Toronto.
The chain of events that led to the recent protests reveals that many Iranians’ deep disapproval of the Islamic Republic’s political system has been brewing for a long time — as has Iranian police forces’ growing use of internet blackouts and deadly force. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which ushered in a theocratic government that continues to this day, there have now been at least six major protest movements among Iranians, with young people playing an important role in many of them. Let’s take a look at each.
July 1999: “The Kuye Daneshgah Disaster”
Twenty years after the revolution — which had promised prosperity and more freedom but didn’t make good on those and other promises — young students had by 1999 become hopeful that change in Iran was possible without violence. In the summer of that year, the Iranian government shut down the reform-oriented newspaper “Salaam,” which triggered a peaceful demonstration on July 8 at Tehran University to advocate for autonomy and free speech. Student protesters were met with a violent federal security militia in the Kuye Daneshgah dormitory.
When the dust settled after six days, the Iranian government confirmed that their forces had shot and killed one student, while on-the-ground reports alleged several more deceased and hundreds injured. The protests quickly spread to other universities and as many as 18 other cities, but the violence and lack of formal political support for the changes students wanted soon blunted the protests.
June 2009: “The Green Movement”
After the turn of the millennium, student activism in Iran only grew. Conversations on reformist and conservative agendas remained contentious among Iranians, and general skepticism of the political system spread among young people. On June 12, 2009, Iranians first formed the “Green Movement” — a nod to reformist campaign colors — to protest what they saw as an illegitimate presidential election. The administration of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared him the winner, announcing his victory over reformist challengers Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mohsen Rezaee and Mehdi Karroub. Authorities announced soon after polls closed that Ahmadinejad earned 62% of the vote, and Mousavi, 33%. But importantly, there were reported inconsistencies in the voting results that made a final tally impossible to know, including that, among other claims, more than 30 provinces allegedly reported turnout exceeding 100%. Iranian voters, especially youth, began protesting the night of the election. The movement emerged with a clear rallying cry — “Where is my vote?” — that spoke to the desire for transparency and verifiable election results.
At the height of the Green Movement demonstrations in 2009, almost three million people marched in Tehran alone. During that time, following a controversial public appearance by Ahmadinejad shortly after the election, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard killed multiple peaceful protesters, including 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan. Video was rolling as paramilitary shot her in the chest in front of fellow Iranians and she collapsed to the street, where a doctor attempted to treat her. Her death proved mobilizing, but protesters ultimately found it difficult to continue demonstrating due to increased imprisonments and restrictions on internet access. The protests ended in 2010.
December 2017: “The Girls of Enghelab Street” and economic protests
The “Girls of Enghelab Street” protests began in late December 2017 at nearly the same time that nationwide economic protests erupted over unemployment, inflation, and corruption. The Enghelab Street unrest was small, urban and symbolic, led primarily by young women challenging compulsory hijab laws. The two movements intersected briefly in timing and atmosphere, but they remained largely separate in organization and messaging, reflecting a broader moment of unrest in which both economic frustration and demands for personal freedoms continued to push young Iranians into public acts of dissent.
An expanded wave of protests began on Dec. 28 in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city, due to inflation and dissatisfaction with economic policies. Demonstrations soon erupted in over 140 cities, organized largely through social media messaging apps. Several days into the widened unrest, the Revolutionary Guard had arrested hundreds of protesters and killed dozens more, including at least five adolescents. The exact numbers killed are still unknown. The protests stopped short of becoming a sustainable uprising because of a lack of leadership, geographic disconnection and the Iranian government’s budding strategy of shutting down nearly the entire internet — a tactic that’s become increasingly important since.
November 2019: “Bloody November”
Many Iranians once again took to the streets when government-controlled fuel prices surged between 50% and 200% in late 2019. They were met this time with a police force that was even more brazen than in previous responses. The Revolutionary Guard operated on “shoot to kill” orders, leading to hundreds of deaths, including 17 teenagers, and thousands of detentions. In an escalation from their previous approach, the force also fired heavy weaponry like machine guns, and autopsies confirmed many shots to heads. Officials continued their strategy of blocking the internet, this time creating a near-total blackout for an entire week and hampering protesters’ ability to organize and communicate.
September 2022: “Woman, Life, Freedom”
A new wave of protests spread in 2022, when on Sept. 16, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman, died after being detained by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating hijab rules. Witnesses said that police pushed Amini into a van and beat her, taking her to Vozara detention center in Tehran. Reports suggested that she was subjected to torture and other violence inside the police van, including blows to her head. She fell into a coma and was transferred in an ambulance to Kasra Hospital in Tehran, where she died in custody three days later. Amini’s killing sparked nationwide protests and the motto “Woman, Life, Freedom.” After her funeral in Saqqez, women across Iran ripped off their hijabs to symbolize freedom and to honor Amini — and youth played a critical role in protests. Police responded with countless detainments, instances of brutality and the use of tear gas, ultimately curbing the protests within several months.
The December 2025 – January 2026 protests
The most recent protests in Iran began in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar on Dec. 28, due to the sudden devaluation of the Iranian rial currency during another wave of economic difficulty. The protests swiftly evolved from a strike by Iranian workers into a political opposition movement spanning more than 400 cities and many university campuses. The government response, which has been the most brutal to date, has come to be characterized by more complete internet shutdowns, brutal deaths at the hands of security forces and thousands of arrests, which have included teenagers.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency places the number of killings between January 8-9 at over 7,000. Estimates in consultation with Iranian hospitals and morgues tally the number at above 30,000. More decisive numbers have been hard to come by, given the ongoing internet blackout and the arrests of those attempting to record and post. The Iranian government reported just over 3,000 deaths, stating that many killings of protesters were by outside actors, and that other deaths were actually the result of protesters killing police. Watchdogs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch allege that government-created blackouts — which even now largely continue — are not just a means to quell protests, but an attempt at covering up the Iranian government’s massacre of its citizens.