This article was first published in the New Statesman on 16th January 2026. It has been updated to incorporate the latest fatality figures and includes references with some further reflections and detail.

Historian Ali Ansari says the Khamenei regime's brutal crackdown on protesters has seen the most 'slaughter' in the country for '150 years'. Ali Ansari says Iranians are counting on outside support to keep the hope of ousting the regime alive, and if Donald Trump's vow to intervene comes to nothing, it will be seen as another Western betrayal.

Protests have swept across Iran but it’s not the first time people have taken to the streets to demand change. For The National, CBC’s Ashley Fraser breaks down the key differences this time and why some say pressure has never been higher on the regime.

“It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran,” Trump told POLITICO, as widespread protests calling for an end to the regime appear to have waned.

Over the past two weeks, Iranians throughout the country, from diverse social classes and backgrounds, have protested economic mismanagement, water and power shortages, and, most recently, an internet and communications blackout, signaling a profound crisis of legitimacy for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

As reform lost credibility as a viable path forward and public violence intensified, the Pahlavi past increasingly came to function not only as a memory of “before,” but as an imagined alternative beyond reform. In this sense, the growing presence of monarchist slogans is less a return to monarchy than a search for an exit from a political order experienced as irredeemable.

“They’ve mass murdered people. No one can imagine … I saw just blood, blood and blood.”

Iranians were not short of reasons to protest. But they were also explicitly urged on by the most powerful man in the world. “Keep protesting,” Trump posted on Tuesday. “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”

Iranian medics have been risking everything to help injured protesters as regime forces take control of hospitals and detain patients.

“We have so many words to say,” his friend blurts out to us, quickly silenced by the anxious whispers of his father, stepping between us.

Bianna Golodryga speaks with Abbas Milani, Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, about the prospect of the U.S. conducting negotiations with Iran.