Iran’s Anti-Regime Protests Intensify as Students Join Unrest
Regime imposes ‘shutdown’ in Tehran, several provinces.
Anti-regime protests intensified in Iran as students joined demonstrators in cities across the country. “Protests over Iran’s soaring cost of living spread to several universities on Tuesday, with students joining shopkeepers and bazaar merchants, semi-official media reported,” Reuters reported.
According to France’s AFP, “protests erupted at seven Tehran universities that are among the country’s most prestigious, and at the technology university in the central city of Isfahan.” The news agency reported seeing “a large police and security presence deployed at major intersections in central Tehran and around certain universities on Tuesday.”
Protests at Amirkabir University of Technology now joining the protest movement in Iran. Mass calls of death to the dictator. pic.twitter.com/LyyG31Rccd
— Emily Schrader – אמילי שריידר امیلی شریدر (@emilykschrader) December 30, 2025
“Protests and strikes in Iran over inflation and currency devaluation have spread from the capital, Tehran, to several other cities on a third day of unrest,” BBC reported on Tuesday. Since Sunday, “videos verified by BBC Persian have shown demonstrations in the cities of Karaj, Hamedan, Qeshm, Malard, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Shiraz and Yazd.”
The protests began on Sunday, after traders and shopkeepers took to the streets of Tehran amid a historic low in the currency. The street protests triggered by inflation and currency collapse quickly turned into anti-regime unrest, the BBC observed:
University students have also joined the protests, chanting anti-government slogans including “Death to the dictator” – a reference to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds ultimate power in Iran.
Some protesters were also heard chanting slogans in support of the son of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, including “Long live the Shah”.
BREAKING:
Students of the University of Tehran join the mass-protests against the Islamic regime and start chasing the regime’s security forces on the streets
Via @RADOCLUB pic.twitter.com/yWd8GiwX8V
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) December 30, 2025
Protesters chanting ‘Death to the Dictator’ Ali Khamenei, and calling for the restoration of the monarchy after 40 years of Islamic tyranny. The Daily Telegraph (UK) covered the unfolding unrest:
Mass protests have erupted across Iran calling for “death to the dictator” over the regime’s economic crisis.
Tear gas was used to disperse protesters as shops shuttered in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar and main markets.
University students called on their peers to join the demonstrations, while chants echoed from rooftops in several cities and the Iranian rial plunged to record lows, all against the backdrop of ongoing threats from Israel and the US.
Residents in one city near Tehran told The Telegraph that a heavy presence of armed motorcycle-mounted security forces was visible around midnight. (…)
In several cities, people went on to their rooftops and chanted slogans against the Islamic Republic and Ali Khamenei, its supreme leader.
Besides using brute force, the Mullah regime imposed a ‘shutdown’ in the capital, Tehran, and other cities in a bid to curb the unrest. “Authorities announced a shutdown would take place Wednesday in Tehran and a number of other provinces across the country,” NBC News reported, as the regime faces “its largest demonstrations in years.”
Students at Khajeh Nasir University in Tehran join the nationwide protests, demonstrating solidarity with citizens demanding economic justice and an end to repression.#IranProtests #FreeIran2025 #IranRevolution pic.twitter.com/jOCc7pr7NX
— Iran News Update (@IranNewsUpdate1) December 30, 2025
The collapse in Iranian currency is a direct result of President Donald Trump’s policy of Maximum Pressure on the regime. The Iranian rial has crashed from 0.86 million to 1.42 million against the dollar since President Trump retook the White House eleven months ago, reinstating sanctions on Tehran.
There is hope again in Iran that the detested mollah regime will finally be toppled. At Shahid Beheshti University, students chanted at Basij members, ‘Basij, ISIS, same thing.’ In Tehran's markets, merchants voiced support for Iran's former rulers, the Pahlavi dynasty, and… pic.twitter.com/Dvhvb3ZYBK
— Donald Jenkins (@donaldjenkins) December 30, 2025
Iran last saw nationwide unrest in 2022 and 2023 after the killing of 23-year-old Mahsa Amini by the ‘Morality Police’ for disregarding the hijab law. The uprising was quelled by armed militia and Shia-Islamist death squads.
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Comments
The Iranians have two choices:
a) Die by the tens of thousands now and overthrow the regime.
or
b) Die by the tens of MILLIONS later when the Mullahs get the bomb, launch it at Israel, and Israel retaliates with scores of nukes, wiping out the country for good.
“There are only nine meals between civilization and anarchy.”
In the case of Iran, you can add water to that quote since it seems they’re out of that too. Not sure how important water is in the middle of a desert though. 🤔
Perhaps 2026 will start on a hopeful note with the mullahs getting what they so richly deserve.
Interesting quote – where’s it from?
Oh nooooo,,,, It’s the students. Always the students. Perpetual troublemakers regardless of who is in charge. I wish I had time for protests when I was a student. I was always too busy going to..you know…school..and studying.. and lab work..and all those things students are supposed to do.
What would revolutions do without “students.”
“Give it to Mikey. He hates everything!”
Students are the backbone of protesting!. It’s important to remember that students were the backbone of the Islamic revolution in Iran. So the fact they are turning on the government is significant.
Well maybe they only seemed the backbone because they occupied the US embassy. The same could be said for the students during China’s great leap forward. I know all the protests in the US never amounted to anything when it was just students.
True that but Iran does work differently. The economy is awful there so going to school is the only option as it’s state funded. So you have this toxic mix of educated young people with no jobs and no prospects for jobs. That’s like fuel on the fire.
Dear ztakddot: I suspect that both of us were students back in the Silly ‘Sixties and Sillier ‘Seventies. I also put my nose to the grindstone then, pursuing a bunch of languages ancient and modern. And now, as I look out on the Iranian students of today and the Western young who are voting for AfD in the former DDR and showing their disgust at the traditional GOP and Democrats, I think of the poet’s post-WW1 line about the “angry and defrauded young”.
I disagree with you about the radicals of our generation accomplishing nothing. They opened themseles to Marxism and birthed a bunch of Old Karl’s bastard children–Third Worldism, Philobabrabrism, radical feminism, LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ…They then went on to carry out a triumphant Gramscian “March Through The Institutions”; and this blog’s commentators are those who see that the institutions are much the worse for wear. I see a lot of lawyers here who see their institution corrupted by that Gramscian triumph; I myself, as a high school ESOL teacher, see a similar ruin of what I’ve come to call “edgy-McKashun”.
A number of years ago, one of my colleagues would give a “Word of Ancient Hebrew Wisdom” over the PA every morning. How I wished I could shake her shoulders and yell in her face (figuratively) that there are lots of us who would take no offense at such words being identified as the Proverbs of Solomon (Mash’lei to those of you who are Jewish)!
Iran’s current youthful rebellion is against elders who overthrew the Shah, hoped for the Tudeh, and saw the Khomeini-ites do an end run around the odds-on favorites (as called even by our own CIA). I just hope they don’t fall for something like the Mojaheddin-e-Khalq.
But, look at the young of Europe flocking to national-populist parties, the rediscovery of white supremacy in the US (bad) and our Charlie Kirk moment (positive). I have run into a lot of Chinese dissidents online (my best second language),too. Are these not a generation of “angry defrauded young” who have seen what their radical elders have wrought?
I pray to Almighty God that we older survivors of a radical era may have some wisdom and compassion. Maybe then the young will see and be ready to learn from our generation’s mistakes.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I don’t disagree but I will say that at least in the US the student radicals had to grow up and burrow into the system and wreck it from within. As students they didn’t and couldn’t do much.
To think; if it wasn’t for Hamas none of this would be happening today!!
the veil of the vile has been lifted
Imagine what might have been if BHO had not turned his back on Iran’s green revolution in 2009.
Although it looks like a decent amount of people when they congregate together there’s not near enough to make a difference.
If the regime collapses, Israel can dump the Palestinians there.
What an idea ! I love it except many Iranians hate them as they see them as the place their government sent all their money and resources , which has truth to it. So likely they wouldn’t get an awesome welcome. Kind of like how the Iraqis hated them as well given that SadamHussein provided for Palestinians above all other people including his own.
Dea Schmuul: My sympathies for the starving children of Gaza are like my sympathies for a dog lying battered and dying by the side of the road–I hate to see suffering, but I’m aware of what happens to a dog who runs out to try to bite the tires of a speeding car. Yes, I have a few criticisms of Zionism and Israel; but its response to the October 7 attacks is not among them.
Your comment exposes the hypocrisy and cynicism hiding behind sympathy for victims of an-Nakba. In Sadam’s Iraq, the grandkid of a Palestinian refuge needed an Iraqi cosigner to buy a car. In all Arab states save Hashemite Jordan, these people are being kept in “refugee” statusdown to the fifth generation at this point. And I gladly recognize the stark contrast with how so many descendants of Bavel, Teman, Aram, Mizraim, and northern Africaare no-questions-asked Israelis!
Thank you for that reply. I do feel sorry for Palestinians they are just used by every Arab nation as the victim cause of choice to batter Israel with ; and to hide their own horrible treatment of their own people. The Palestinian refugee crisis should never have existed and could be ended by tomorrow if one Arab nation actually cared about these people more than they hated Israel. Since they don’t the manufactured crisis will persist causing suffering and harm for Jews and Palestinians.
Not to mention the Arabs calling themselves “Palestinians” are just that, Arabs and thus of a different “tribe” from the Persians of Iran.
No water is almost biblical
The rule of revolution says that the ruling regime will stay in power until the rank and file of the military joins the rebel side.
🙏 Vivat Jesus.