Iran cuts internet as protests escalate
Government buildings across the country have been set on fire
What happened
Iranians took to the streets across the country Thursday and protested through Friday morning, but the “full scope of the demonstrations couldn’t be immediately determined” due to “Iran’s theocracy cutting off the nation from the internet and international telephone calls,” The Associated Press said. At least 62 people have been killed since protests over Iran’s ailing economy broke out on Dec. 28 and then “morphed into the most significant challenge to the government in several years.”
Who said what
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a brief televised address Friday morning that protesters are “ruining their own streets to make the president of another country happy,” a reference to President Donald Trump. Trump said on Fox News Thursday night that “the enthusiasm to overturn the regime has been incredible” and if Iranian authorities “do anything bad to these people, we’re going to hit them very hard.”
Videos from Iran filmed on Thursday night “showed government buildings on fire across the country, including in Tehran, as protests grew,” The New York Times said. Exiled former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late shah, called for mass demonstrations at 8 p.m. these past two days, and that “turned the tide of the protests,” said Holly Dagres with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The internet was shut down” to “prevent the world from seeing” that “Iranians had delivered and were taking the call seriously” to “oust the Islamic Republic” through protests.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
What next?
Trump claimed in his Fox News interview that Khamenei was “looking to go someplace” because “it’s getting very bad” in Iran. But asked if he would meet with Pahlavi, Trump said he was “not sure that it would be appropriate at this point to do that as president.”
-
Did Alex Pretti’s killing open a GOP rift on guns?Talking Points Second Amendment groups push back on the White House narrative
-
The 8 best hospital dramas of all timethe week recommends From wartime period pieces to of-the-moment procedurals, audiences never tire of watching doctors and nurses do their lifesaving thing
-
‘Implementing strengthened provisions help advance aviation safety’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Israel retrieves final hostage’s body from GazaSpeed Read The 24-year-old police officer was killed during the initial Hamas attack
-
China’s Xi targets top general in growing purgeSpeed Read Zhang Youxia is being investigated over ‘grave violations’ of the law
-
Panama and Canada are negotiating over a crucial copper mineIn the Spotlight Panama is set to make a final decision on the mine this summer
-
Trump backs off Greenland threats, declares ‘deal’Speed Read Trump and NATO have ‘formed the framework for a future deal,’ the president claimed
-
Iran unleashes carnage on its own peopleFeature Demonstrations began in late December as an economic protest
-
How oil tankers have been weaponisedThe Explainer The seizure of a Russian tanker in the Atlantic last week has drawn attention to the country’s clandestine shipping network
-
Iran in flames: will the regime be toppled?
In Depth The moral case for removing the ayatollahs is clear, but what a post-regime Iran would look like is anything but
-
Europe moves troops to Greenland as Trump fixatesSpeed Read Foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark met at the White House yesterday
