Internet blackout in Iran as protests over economy intensify across the country

Iran faced a complete internet blackout on Thursday as massive protests over the economy spread across the country, in what was rapidly becoming one of the biggest challenges ever to the country’s clerical leadership.

Huge crowds of protesters in Tehran shouted from their homes and rallied in the street after a call by the country’s exiled crown prince for mass demonstrations against the regime.

It was a new escalation in unrest that has spread nationwide across the Islamic Republic, and represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by appeals from Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

So far, violence around the demonstrations has killed at least 41 people while more than 2,270 others have been detained, said the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

Witnesses in the capital and major cities including Mashhad and Isfahan told Reuters that protesters gathered again in the streets, chanting slogans against the country’s hardline rulers, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Shops remained shuttered in the western provinces of Ilam, Kermanshah and Lorestan, as many businesses heeded calls for a general strike from seven Kurdish political groups.

Unverified videos posted to social media before the internet blackout showed large crowds in the streets.

Such public demonstrations used to risk a death sentence, but now underline widespread anger over Iran’s ailing economy.

Mr Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s late Shah toppled in the 1979 Islamic Revolution who has been trying to fill the leadership vacuum, called in a video posted on X for more protests.

“Based on your response, I will announce the next calls to action,” Mr Pahlavi said in a widely shared video.

Iranian state media insisted cities across the country were calm.

It was the 12th consecutive day of unrest in the country, as anger grew over the collapse of the Iranian currency. The protests have spread to more than 100 cities and towns across all 31 provinces of Iran, human rights groups have said.

CloudFlare, an internet firm, and the advocacy group NetBlocks reported the internet outage, both attributing it to Iranian government interference.

Mr Pahlavi had called for demonstrations at 8pm local time on Thursday and Friday; when the clock struck, neighbourhoods across Tehran erupted in chanting, witnesses said.

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