Protests in Iran have subsided after a crackdown by security forces amid an internet blackout, monitors said Friday, a week after the start of the largest demonstrations in years challenging the country’s government.
Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of Iran’s late shah, however, said he was confident the Islamic republic would fall and called for intervention, though the threat of new military action by the United States against Iran has appeared to have receded for the time being.
In posts to social media on Friday, Pahlavi announced a fresh coordinated demonstration, calling for Iranians to “raise your voices in anger and protest with our national slogans” on the weekend.
Protests sparked by economic grievances started with a shutdown in the Tehran bazaar on December 28 but turned into a mass movement demanding the removal of the clerical system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 revolution.
People started pouring into the streets in big cities from January 8 but authorities immediately enforced a shutdown of the internet that has lasted over a week and activists say is aimed at masking the scale of the crackdown.
The “brutal” repression has “likely suppressed the protest movement for now”, said the US-based Institute for the Study of War, which has monitored the protest activity.
But it added: “The regime’s widespread mobilisation of security forces is unsustainable, however, which makes it possible that protests could resume.”
Pahlavi also told a news conference in Washington on Friday that “The Islamic republic will fall – not if, but when.” “I will return to Iran,” he said.
