This frame grab from a video released Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, by Iranian state television shows a man holding a device to document burning vehicles during a night of mass protests in Zanjan, Iran. AP
With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. But the death toll in the protests has grown to at least 65 people killed and over 2,300 others detained, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. Iranian state TV is reporting on security force casualties while portraying control over the nation.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has signalled a coming clampdown, despite U.S. warnings.
“The United States supports the brave people of Iran,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote Saturday on the social platform X. The State Department separately warned: “Do not play games with President Trump. When he says he’ll do something, he means it.”
State TV split-screen highlights Iran's challenge
Saturday marks the start of the work week in Iran, but many schools and universities reportedly held online classes, Iranian state TV reported. Internal Iranian government websites are believed to be functioning.
State TV repeatedly played a driving, martial orchestral arrangement from the “Epic of Khorramshahr” by Iranian composer Majid Entezami, while showing pro-government demonstrations. The song, aired repeatedly during the 12-day war launched by Israel, honours Iran's 1982 liberation of the city of Khorramshahr during the Iran-Iraq war. It has been used in videos of protesting women cutting away their hair to protest the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini as well.
“Field reports indicate that peace prevailed in most cities of the country at night,” a state TV anchor reported. “After several armed terrorists attacked public places and set fire to people’s private property last night, there was no news of any gathering or chaos in Tehran and most provinces last night.”
That was directly contradicted by an online video verified by The Associated Press that showed demonstrations in northern Tehran's Saadat Abad area, with what appeared to be thousands on the street.
“Death to Khamenei!” a man chanted.
The semiofficial Fars news agency, believed to be close to Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and one of the few media outlets able to publish to the outside world, released surveillance camera footage of what it said came from demonstrations in Isfahan. In it, a protester appeared to fire a long gun, while others set fires and threw gasoline bombs at what appeared to be a government compound.
The Young Journalists' Club, associated with state TV, reported that protesters killed three members of the Guard’s all-volunteer Basij force in the city of Gachsaran. It also reported a security official was stabbed to death in Hamadan province, a police officer was killed in the port city of Bandar Abbas, and another in Gilan, as well as one person was slain in Mashhad.
State television also aired footage of a funeral service attended by hundreds in Qom, a Shiite seminary city just south of Tehran.
More weekend demonstrations planned
Iran’s theocracy cut off the nation from the internet and international telephone calls on Thursday, though it allowed some state-owned and semiofficial media to publish. Qatar's state-funded Al Jazeera news network reported live from Iran, but they appeared to be the only major foreign outlet able to work.
Iran's exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who called for protests Thursday and Friday, asked in his latest message for demonstrators to take to the streets Saturday and Sunday. He urged protesters to carry Iran's old lion-and-sun flag and other national symbols used during the time of the shah to “claim public spaces as your own.”
Pahlavi's support of and from Israel has drawn criticism in the past, particularly after the 12-day war. Demonstrators have shouted in support of the shah in some protests, but it isn’t clear whether that’s support for Pahlavi himself or a desire to return to a time before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Tehran accuses Trump
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei fired back at US President Donald Trump on Friday, accusing Washington of seeking to exploit protests in Iran and warning that authorities would not tolerate what he described as foreign-backed “saboteurs", according to state media.
“Trump should know that world tyrants such as Pharaoh, Nimrod, Reza Shah and Mohammad Reza were brought down at the peak of their arrogance. He too will be brought down,” Khamenei said in remarks aired on state television.
He accused protesters of acting at the behest of foreign powers and said authorities would not tolerate what he described as “mercenaries for foreigners," according to state media.
Khamenei said Trump’s hands “are stained with the blood of more than a thousand Iranians," an apparent reference to Israel’s June war against the Islamic Republic, which the United States supported and later joined with strikes of its own.
“Everyone should know that the Islamic Republic came to power with the blood of hundreds of thousands of honourable people, and it will not back down in the face of saboteurs,” he was quoted as saying.
The demonstrations began Dec. 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at over 1.4 million to $1, as the economy is squeezed by international sanctions levied by Western powers over its nuclear program in the aftermath of an Israeli/US attack on the country last June.
*This story was edited by Ahram online.
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