Iran’s government cut off internet access and blocked international telephone calls Thursday night as thousands of demonstrators heeded a call from exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi and filled streets across Tehran and other cities, according to the internet monitoring firms CloudFlare and NetBlocks, both of which attributed the blackout to Iranian government interference.
Violence around the ongoing protests has killed at least 42 people and led to the detention of more than 2,270 others, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said.
The communication shutdown — of the type that has historically preceded intense government crackdowns — marks a new phase in Iran’s response to demonstrations that began in late December over the collapse of the country’s currency, and represents the first significant test of whether royalist exile figures can translate calls for action into coordinated street pressure on the Islamic Republic.
Blackout follows mass demonstrations
When the clock struck 8 p.m. Thursday local time in Tehran, neighborhoods erupted in chanting, witnesses told the Associated Press. Crowds shouted “Death to the dictator!” and “Death to the Islamic Republic!” Others praised the former royal family, chanting: “This is the last battle! Pahlavi will return!” Thousands were visible on the streets before all communication into and out of Iran went dark.
Iranian state television’s 24-hour news channel did not acknowledge the blackout that cut a nation of more than 85 million people off from the outside world, focusing its 7 a.m. Friday broadcast on food subsidies instead, the AP reported.
“Iranians demanded their freedom tonight. In response, the regime in Iran has cut all lines of communication,” Pahlavi said in a statement. “It has shut down the Internet. It has cut landlines. It may even attempt to jam satellite signals.”
Pahlavi called on European leaders to join U.S. President Donald Trump in promising to hold Iran’s government accountable, and urged governments to “use all technical, financial, and diplomatic resources available to restore communication to the Iranian people so that their voice and their will can be heard and seen.”
Trump warns Iran against violence
Trump warned last week that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” America “will come to their rescue,” and reiterated the pledge in a radio interview with talk show host Hugh Hewitt.
“Iran has ‘been told very strongly, even more strongly than I’m speaking to you right now, that if they do that, they’re going to have to pay hell,’” Trump said.
Trump declined to say whether he would meet with Pahlavi. “I’m not sure that it would be appropriate at this point to do that as president,” Trump said. “I think that we should let everybody go out there, and we see who emerges.”
Iran’s government has not publicly explained why it has refrained from a harder crackdown, a restraint that analysts have attributed in part to the American warnings.
Background: Currency collapse and spreading unrest
Demonstrations have spread to cities and rural towns across all of Iran since they began in late December. More markets and bazaars closed Thursday in solidarity with protesters, the AP reported.
The protests took root after Iran’s rial currency collapsed in December, reaching 1.4 million to the dollar, a record low. The currency’s decline accelerated as sanctions tightened and Iran’s economy continued to struggle following a 12-day war with Israel in June, according to the AP.
The hard-line Kayhan newspaper published a video online claiming security forces would use drones to identify participants in the demonstrations. Iranian officials have not publicly acknowledged the scale of the protests.
Violence on both sides
Security forces and protesters have suffered casualties in the widening unrest. The judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported a police colonel suffered fatal stab wounds in a town outside Tehran. The semiofficial Fars news agency said gunmen killed two security force members and wounded 30 others in a shooting in the city of Lordegan in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province.
A deputy governor in Khorasan Razavi province told state television that an attack at a police station killed five people Wednesday night in Chenaran, approximately 700 kilometers northeast of Tehran. The Revolutionary Guard said Thursday night that two of its members were killed in Kermanshah.
Imprisoned Nobel laureate’s son speaks
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, who was arrested in December, remains imprisoned. Her son Ali Rahmani described the current demonstrations in the context of past cycles of protest and repression.
“Since Dec. 28, 2025, the people of Iran have taken to the streets, just as they did in 2009, 2019,” Rahmani said. “Each time, the same demands came up: an end to the Islamic Republic, an end to this patriarchal, dictatorial and religious regime, the end of the clerics, the end of the mullahs’ regime.”
Leadership question remains unresolved
The protests themselves have remained broadly leaderless, and whether Pahlavi’s call will shape the demonstrations going forward is unclear. His ties to Israel have drawn criticism — particularly after Israel’s military campaign against Iran in June — and demonstrations that have included chants in support of the shah may reflect a desire to return to a pre-1979 era rather than explicit support for Pahlavi as a leader.
“The lack of a viable alternative has undermined past protests in Iran,” wrote Nate Swanson of the Washington-based Atlantic Council. “There may be a thousand Iranian dissident activists who, given a chance, could emerge as respected statesmen, as labor leader Lech Wałęsa did in Poland at the end of the Cold War. But so far, the Iranian security apparatus has arrested, persecuted and exiled all of the country’s potential transformational leaders.”