Majid, who said he was a mobile shopkeeper in his 30s, spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity. AFP said he was reached outside Iran, as were the other people quoted in this report.
Majid said he rallied with hundreds of others in eastern Mashhad on Wednesday night as police tried to disperse the crowd.
“Police are targeting people with pellets, tear gas and shotguns,” Majid said.
“At first, people dispersed, but they gathered again,” he said, adding that they stayed in the streets until early morning.
“We know that if we go out there, we might not survive, but we are going and we will go out there to have a better future,” he said.
The demonstrations, sparked in late December by anger over the rising cost of living and currency weakness, have spread to cities across the country. The Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights has said dozens of protesters have been killed.
Iranian state-linked and local media have reported at least 21 deaths, including members of the security forces, since the unrest began, according to an AFP tally.
Majid said the breadth of participation felt different from previous protests.
“During these protests, even those people or those classes that had never felt the pressure before are now under pressure,” he said.
“You can see 50-year-old women, I saw someone who used to collect garbage on the streets chanting slogans along with shopkeepers. Young, old, men, women, all are in the streets.”
He said he believed the current protests could be decisive.
“This is going to be the last fight against the government,” Majid said, though he said he was uncertain what would come next.
“Right now, we just want to get rid of this bloody government because no matter who comes to rule, it won’t be as bloody as them.”
Last week, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei linked the protests to economic grievances while assigning responsibility for the currency crisis to foreign adversaries.
“These gatherings were mainly by bazaar merchants,” he said, adding that sharp and unstable exchange-rate swings were “not natural” and were “the work of the enemy."
On Friday, Khamenei accused US President Donald Trump of seeking to exploit protests in Iran, 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.
A shop owner in Kermanshah in western Iran said he had closed his store on Thursday as part of a strike called in protest. The 43-year-old said he had taken part in protests since 2009, but said this wave felt different because “people’s economic situation is heading towards complete collapse and life is no longer as it once was”.
“No matter how hard we work, we cannot keep up with the inflation for which the regime is responsible,” he told AFP via a messaging app, saying protesters wanted “radical change in Iran”.
“Although I have a relatively good job, our lives have been severely affected this year by these economic conditions. We want a free and democratic Iran, and a free Kurdistan.”
Another merchant in Saqqez in Kurdistan province said he expected “more intense and widespread waves of protests in the coming days in Kurdish cities”.
In Tehran, one resident said she and her neighbours had been shouting slogans from their windows at night, as they did during protests in 2022.
She said the “level of dissatisfaction is higher than ever”. While President Masoud Pezeshkian has called for “restraint” and announced measures aimed at addressing grievances, she said: “the issue for us is the end of the regime, and nothing else is satisfactory”.
Another Tehran resident, a mother of two, said in a message to a relative abroad that she was safe but that her internet connection was becoming unreliable, shortly before access went dark nationwide ahead of protests on Thursday night. She said it was becoming harder to buy groceries as some stores reduced opening hours.
“Hoping for better days for all of us,” she said.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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