The stream of videos seems endless. They cascade in, one after another, showing Iranians in their hundreds, then thousands, and eventually tens of thousands, flooding the streets. Men and women stand together, their faces bared, their voices unified in a chorus of defiance. They march without fear, having little left to lose.
But this isn’t the story of 2023. It’s not the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement, though that was a noble cause. Back then, the anger was still directed at specific grievances: the compulsory hijab, police brutality, everyday indignities. Earlier protests tackled economic woes and fraudulent elections, clinging to a slim hope that the system could be reformed, or at least slightly altered.
That hope has vanished.
This current uprising is a break from the past. It’s not about reform; it’s about a complete rupture. The aim is to dismantle the Islamic Republic, which has held power for nearly five decades.
The crowds now shout, “Death to Khamenei!” targeting the elderly ayatollah who helms Iran. This shift in rhetoric is significant. For years, the regime had indoctrinated its citizens to chant “Death to America” and “Death to Britain.”
Now, the condemnation is directed inward, focusing on the figure at the heart of a corrupted state.
The very language of the regime has been weaponised against it.
What marks this moment out is scale. Footage verified by open-source analysts shows unrest across dozens of cities: Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Ahvaz.
Anti-regime demonstrators celebrate as they take control of the streets in the city of Kermanshah, western Iran, this week as protests sweep the nation
Protesters mill around cars jamming a main road in Mashhad, 560 miles from Tehran
The protests cut across regions, classes and ethnic lines. Kurdish towns. Arab provinces. Azeri cities. Persian heartlands.
In multiple locations, crowds have moved beyond slogans to target regime symbols directly, including Basij bases and Revolutionary Guard sites.
And then there is the other chant. The one the clerics fear most. ‘Zendeh bad Pahlavi!’ Long live Pahlavi. Long live the late shah’s son, 65-year-old Reza Pahlavi, who sits in exile in Washington DC, and who for many Iranians is the king over the water.
This is not sentimentality. It is a statement of intent. A refusal to accept the lie that Iran’s history began in 1979.
The state still has the guns. But fear is shifting sides.
Over fifty years ago, my maternal family fled Iran as Islamist fascism took hold. Now, perhaps, it is finally losing its grip.
Friends on the ground were sceptical at first. They have been betrayed too often to believe easily. But now they are starting to believe.
‘Maybe this time, dear David…’ writes a friend in Tehran. ‘I have never seen anything like this.’
An old woman, her face split open, blood streaming down her cheeks, was filmed walking through Tehran: ‘I am not afraid to die,’ she says. ‘I have been dead for forty-seven years.’ Life under the Islamic Republic, she tells us, has already killed her.
I have seen footage of unarmed protesters marching toward the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard. No weapons. No cover. No panic.
Just Iranians who have had enough – moving forward, reclaiming what is theirs.
The Guard is the regime’s killing arm. Sadistic. Corrupt. Steeped in blood from Tehran to Damascus. To walk towards it empty-handed is a statement of contempt.
The regime’s response reeks of panic. It has shut down the internet, throttled mobile and messaging apps. Revolutionary Guard units have been called back from regional deployments and flooded into major cities.
The Ayatollah makes his first comments on Iranian state television since the outbreak of unrest
Awnings depicting the Iranian leadership over a road in Ahvaz in flames amid protests
State television thunders about ‘foreign agents’ and shadowy plots while refusing to acknowledge the size of the crowds.
This pattern is well-worn.
Tehran shuts down information first. Then it moves on the people. In November 2019, the same sequence ended with hundreds dead in days.
And yet in Britain, there is near silence.
Turn on the BBC and, apart from a few brief clips, you would scarcely know a historic revolt was under way for most of yesterday. No urgency. No sustained coverage. No moral clarity.
Iran’s people are desperately trying to throw off the chains of their Islamist oppressors, and the British national broadcaster averts its gaze.
Keir Starmer is just as bad. Awkward and hesitant. Reduced to limp, half-hearted statements that everyone ignores.
I suspect our Prime Minister is most troubled by whether protesters might be violating some abstruse clause of international law as they lie bleeding and twitching on the ground.
And, perhaps, Labour is equally wary of alienating sections of its expansive Muslim base by welcoming the overthrow of an explicitly Islamist regime.
But despite Starmer’s silence, these protests matter. And if you think they don’t concern you, you are wrong.
Iran is the hinge of the Middle East. It sits between the Caspian Basin and the Persian Gulf, astride two of the world’s great energy reserves.
Through the Strait of Hormuz flows roughly a fifth of global oil. When Iran moves, the world shakes.
It is a country of around 90million people. And they are educated and capable. Its scientists built a nuclear programme under sanctions that would have crushed weaker nations. Its engineers, doctors and technologists are world class.
And let me tell you something unfashionable but true. The overwhelming majority of Iranians are pro-Western to their core. I have never been anywhere else where strangers asked me to teach them English in an American accent.
They watch our films. Read our books. Follow our music. And they loathe the men who rule them for stealing that world away. They know Iran should be rich, open and powerful – as it has been for long stretches of history.
Instead, it is plundered to fund medieval terror groups from Gaza to Yemen, its wealth burned on ideology, its future mortgaged to geriatric clerics and adolescent gunmen. If this regime falls, it will not be a regional footnote. It will be a global shock.
If what replaces the mullahs is even halfway sane, then vast change will come, all of it good. Energy markets will open. Proxy wars will buckle. Terror networks will falter. Nuclear calculations will change overnight.
Donald Trump has already warned that if the regime begins slaughtering protesters en masse, the White House is ready to act.
Believe him or not, the words matter. They draw a line. And lines only hold if the world is watching.
Silence is Tehran’s greatest ally. Darkness is its shield. Every ignored video, every muted voice, gives the regime yet more space to kill unseen.
Britain still has a voice, though one diminished by our leaders’ decisions, over many years, which have reduced our global status. We should be using it. Loudly. Without apology. Without delay.
What is happening in Iran is momentous. It may yet be historic. But history does not announce itself in advance. It depends on who speaks, and who looks away.
The BBC might have averted its eyes. Keir Starmer may stall and squirm. We must not.
Because if Iranians are brave enough to face batons and bullets with bare hands, then the least we can do is look at their efforts with open eyes.
They are risking their lives to face down one of the world’s great evils: Islamist oppression. And for that they deserve our solidarity, not our silence.
