With Calls for ‘Death to the Dictator’Protests Continue Across Iran
by John Hayward, Breitbart (excerpt)
Protests against the Iranian theocracy spread to most of Iran’s 31 provinces as of Tuesday, including cities that have long been seen as firmly loyal to the ayatollah.
The current movement is arguably larger than the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising that shook the regime in 2022, and today’s demonstrators show no signs of backing down in the face of brutal repression.
The BBC cited video confirmation of massive protests in 17 provinces, plus reports of demonstrations in 11 more, although those lacked copious video documentation as of Tuesday morning.
Verified video footage of anti-government demonstrations was posted from over 50 Iranian towns and cities — including the “holy cities” of Qom and Mashhad, which have previously been strongholds of the theocracy.
Outside analysts said the surprising size and persistence of protests in the regime’s political fortress cities was a sign that even the ayatollah’s hardcore supporters are abandoning him in the face of rank incompetence and economic collapse.
The regime seems reluctant to indulge in the kind of bloody crackdown that snuffed out the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, the protests after Iran’s humiliating defeat by Israel and the United States in the summer of 2025, and the uprising after rigged elections in 2009.
There has been state-sanctioned violence against the protesters, and human rights groups counted 25 fatalities over the past nine days, but Tehran’s response has been fairly restrained compared to previous crackdowns.
This could be partly due to President Donald Trump’s warning that the U.S. military would intervene if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” a warning the Trump administration repeated with a bit of swagger on Sunday after the astonishing military operation to capture Venezuelan narco-terrorist dictator Nicolás Maduro.
The Iranian regime is also attempting a difficult political balancing act by …