- An elderly woman protestor in Tehran defied the Islamic regime in a viral video
- She marched bleeding and chanted anti-government slogans despite risks
- Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad shared the clip highlighting public anger
As Iran intensified efforts to crack down on anti-government protests, a video of an elderly woman protestor defying the Islamic regime went viral, becoming a symbol of nationwide agitation driven by economic hardship and growing public anger. In the viral clip from the nighttime protest, the woman, who appears to be bleeding from her mouth, can be seen marching through the streets of Tehran and chanting anti-government slogans.
"I'm not afraid. I've been dead for 47 years," she shouts. It is not clear if the red liquid oozing from the woman's mouth was blood or if she was using some kind of paint as a symbol of dissent.
Iran's Islamic regime began 47 years ago with the 1979 Islamic Revolution, overthrowing the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and establishing a Shiite Islamic theocracy led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The current Supreme Leader of Iran, Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, is the grandson of Islamic Republic founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Sharing the clip on X, Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad wrote, "I'm not afraid. I've been dead for 47 years, This is the voice of a woman in Iran who is fed up with the Islamic republic."
"47 years ago, the Islamic Republic took our rights and turned a nation into hostages. Today people have nothing left to lose, they rise. Iran is rising," she added.
Iran's Crackdown On Protest
Iran's government cut off the country from the internet and international telephone calls as a nighttime demonstration called by the country's exiled crown prince drew a mass of protesters to shout from their windows and storm the streets.
The protest that went on into Friday morning represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution. Demonstrations have included cries in support of the shah, something that could have brought a death sentence in the past but now underlines the anger fuelling the protests that began over Iran's ailing economy.
The demonstrations that have popped up in cities and rural towns across Iran continued on Thursday. More markets and bazaars shut down in support of the protesters. So far, violence around the demonstrations has killed at least 42 people, while more than 2,270 others have been detained, said the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
Iran's Islamic Regime Under Pressure
The growth of the protests increases the pressure on Iran's civilian government and its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. CloudFlare, an internet firm, and the advocacy group NetBlocks reported the internet outage, both attributing it to Iranian government interference. Such outages have in the past been followed by intense government crackdowns.
Iran's state TV finally broke the silence on the protests on Friday, reporting casualties and claiming 'terrorist agents' of the US and Israel set fires. It, however, did not acknowledge the internet outage that cut the nation of over 85 million people off from the world, highlighting instead food subsidies in their 7 am Friday broadcast.
Meanwhile, the protests themselves have remained broadly leaderless, with Iranians in mass numbers taking to the streets and chanting slogans, including, “Death to the dictator!” and “Death to the Islamic Republic!”
Others praised the Pahlavi, shouting, “This is the last battle! Pahlavi will return!”
