After many thousands killed and tens of thousands arrested, the latest protest against the ayatollahs' regime is coming to an end, with the Islamic Republic retaining its grip on power. What was lacking for the uprising to succeed? Was this a missed historic opportunity? And is there, nonetheless, an optimistic side?
Talk in Washington, bullets in Tehran
Mass protests are nothing new to Iranians.
Over the past decade, the Iranian public has taken to the streets in several major waves of protest. The most prominent were the hijab protests and the "bread protests" of 2017–2018, the fuel protests of 2019, the "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests of 2022, often mistakenly labeled "the hijab protests," and the current uprising.
Over the past two weeks, around one million regime opponents flooded the streets of cities and villages across all provinces, denouncing the Islamic Republic and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The overthrow of a tyrannical regime ultimately requires firepower directed against the regime itself. Iran's opposition is not sufficiently armed to topple the government on its own, unlike the revolution in Syria, and such efforts usually depend on a mutiny from within the military. In Iran, the situation is more complex because there are effectively two armies: the regular Iranian army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Members of the IRGC are deeply tied to the regime and enjoy the privileges of power, so hopes for defections were pinned on the regular army and also on Iran's police forces, which took part in suppressing the protests. The demonstrators waited and prayed for a mutiny. It never came.
Those who gave the protests momentum were the exiled crown prince, Reza Cyrus Ali Pahlavi, who called on the masses to take to the streets, and US President Donald Trump, who threatened to strike the Islamic Republic if it harmed protesters. But while the claimant to the throne, whom many hoped would return, and the backing Trump appeared to promise both remained in Washington, 10,000 kilometers away, the regime in Tehran was massacring crowds. Trump did not come to the rescue, and the words of a leader seeking to rule a country he has not set foot in since 1978 did not protect demonstrators from regime gunfire or from Iraqi militias that rushed to its aid.
Iranians today feel betrayed, and with good reason. The protests have exacted an extraordinarily heavy price, and last night Tehran's prosecutor general, Ali Salehi, hinted that many executions of detainees from the protests are on the way. Some of the anger on Iranian social media is also directed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In normal times, Netanyahu enjoys immense popularity among regime opponents, if only because he leads the country that has been eliminating their enemies one by one. Now some argue that Netanyahu, who urged demonstrators to take to the streets, knew Trump had no intention of striking and misled them.
One can hope that a US strike may still come, although even if it does, it may well be too late to reignite the protest. For the 12,000 to 20,000 Iranians who were slaughtered, it is certainly too late.
The sense of despair spreading through Iranian society after the massive losses, tens of thousands wounded and arrested, and Trump's failure to deliver on his word has created a reality in which it is unclear what could bring Iranians back into the streets, or when, if ever, that might happen.
As of now, Khamenei and the ayatollahs' regime are being portrayed as having stood firm in the face of the US threat without blinking, turning them, in the eyes of supporters and opponents alike, into something close to invincible.
China or North Korea?
Another intriguing aspect of the protests is the issue of internet connectivity. For nearly six days, the Islamic Republic was cut off from the internet, except for the regime and its associates who operate with white SIM cards, and for those who managed to connect via Starlink infrastructure.
It was clear this could not last long. Without internet access, domestic and foreign commerce is severely harmed, and essential services such as hospitals and local authorities are also badly affected.
ویدیوهای دریافتی: 'میدان کاج سعادتآباد #تهران پنجشنبه ۱۸ دی'#Iran #DigitalBlackoutIran pic.twitter.com/vB4sDVaYcr
— Vahid Online (@Vahid) January 18, 2026
According to a dramatic report by IranWire, government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani told certain parties that the country's connection to the global internet would remain shut down at least until the upcoming Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on March 20.
The Islamic Republic cannot function without internet access for another two months, and based on that report, it is quite possible that it will shift to some form of internal network at least until March, and perhaps beyond. Such a system could resemble China's model, with limited access to the global network behind a "Great Firewall" that blocks many sites, or even North Korea's intranet model, completely disconnected from the outside world. Such a move would help the regime tighten its grip on the population, make internal resistance more difficult and hinder the flow of information abroad.
Aladdin, Jafar and a trip to the grave
Still, several positive points can be drawn from the protests.
First, they began with merchants, who are generally considered more conservative and closer to the regime. A curious note for Disney fans: the strike started in Tehran's Grand Bazaar, known as the "Aladdin Bazaar," while the cleric who forbade religious figures from exploiting their authority to rule politically or carry out repression was the sixth Shiite imam, Jaafar.
Second, participation in the latest protests shattered previous records.
Third, most of the demonstrators, and accordingly most of the dead and detained, are young people, many of whom are connected to Western culture and appear far less tolerant of authoritarian religious rule. Their motivation to continue resisting is therefore likely to remain high. Accordingly, the chants in this wave did not call for reform, but for the overthrow of the regime.
Fourth, the factors that triggered the protests remain, and are only expected to worsen. The economic crisis has now taken another blow, and there is no prospect of a comprehensive solution to the water and energy crises or to the severe air pollution. The standing of the mullahs within Iran continues to erode, and although members of the Iraqi militias, al-Hashd al-Shaabi, arrived to help, the terrorist organization Hezbollah was notably absent. This latest episode underscores the weakening of the regime's proxies and appears to be part of the regime's broader unraveling.
If there is a date on which the protests might resume, assuming no larger event intervenes first, it could be around February 18–19. In Shiite Islam, it is customary to observe a chehelom, a forty-day mourning period, and on those dates forty days will have passed since the night of January 8–9, when most of the demonstrators were massacred. The many memorials and the end of mourning could reignite public anger, especially if the regime repeats what it has often done in the past: preventing families from visiting graves at the end of the chehelom when the deaths were politically motivated.
