Thousands of Iranians flooded the streets of Tehran and other cities Thursday night, heeding a call by the country's exiled crown prince to make their voices heard in the most serious challenge to the Islamic Republic's hardline rulers in many years.
The protests had spread across the country for 12 days, leaving about 40 people dead and more than 2,000 detained by security forces, but despite the arrests and a nationwide internet and phone service blackout, the unrest escalated dramatically on Thursday night.
It was impossible to get a clear picture of the extent of the unrest, given the clamp down on the flow of information. But Iran's ruler appeared in a brief television address on Friday morning, defiantly accusing President Trump of inspiring the protests, showing he remained in charge, and vowing that his regime would "not back down."
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, called for unity and accused "a bunch of vandals" in Tehran, where a state TV building was set alight, of having "destroyed a building that belongs to them to please the U.S. president."
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei comments on nationwide protests, on Iranian State Television in the capital Tehran, Jan. 9, 2026 IRIB/Handout/Anadolu/Getty
As he spoke, an audience in front of him shouted the familiar refrain of "Death to America!"
Given the communications blackout, which continued Friday morning according to the NetBlocks internet monitoring organization, short videos posted online, largely by anti-regime activists, provided the only real window into the chaos across the country.
It appeared to ramp up dramatically from 8 p.m. local time on Thursday, the moment at which exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi had urged Iranians to shout and chant from their windows against the regime.
"Iranians demanded their freedom tonight," said Pahlavi, the son of the former head of state Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who fled the country just before the 1979 Islamic revolution that brought the current regime to power.
In statements posted online, he called for European leaders to join Mr. Trump to "hold the regime to account," using "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. Do not let the voices of my courageous compatriots be silenced."
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