The Religious Leadership of Iran appaere to have quashed another attempt to depose them….
The result is thosands dead and country that STILL has SERIOUS Economic problems….
The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has acknowledged for the first time that thousands of people were killed during the protests that rocked Iran over the last two weeks.
In a speech on Thursday, Khamenei said that thousands of people had been killed, “some in an inhuman, savage manner”, and blamed the US for the death toll. The supreme leader railed against the US president, Donald Trump, whom he called a “criminal” for his support of demonstrations, and called for strict punishment of protesters.
Khamenei said: “By God’s grace, the Iranian nation must break the back of the seditionists just as it broke the back of the sedition.”
Iranian authorities also released a compilation of footage on Saturday that purported to show armed individuals carrying guns and knives alongside regular protesters – evidence, they said, of foreign saboteurs.
Another senior Iranian cleric demanded the execution of protesters, demanding that “armed hypocrites should be put to death”.
He described protesters as “butlers” and “soldiers” of Israel and the US, vowing that neither country should “expect peace”.
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The brutal quashing of demonstrations by authorities, which Human Rights Watch said on Friday included the “mass killings of protesters”, has largely driven people off the streets.
With the immediate unrest addressed, authorities were making a public show of punishing those involved in the action, which they had styled as a foreign-backed plot to destabilise the country.
Khatami, in his Friday sermon, claimed 350 mosques, 126 prayer halls and 20 other places of worship had been damaged by protesters. He also said 400 hospitals, 106 ambulances, 71 fire trucks and 50 other emergency vehicles had been damaged.
It was unclear what the fallout of the protest movement will be, or if it will reignite in the coming days. Iran continues to be cut off from the rest of the world, as authorities maintain the more than week-long internet shutdown.
Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late shah of Iran who had become a prominent opposition voice during the protests, continued to call for the overthrow of the government on Friday and urged Trump to intervene.
“I believe the president is a man of his word,” Pahlavi said, adding that “regardless of whether action is taken or not, we as Iranians have no choice to carry on the fight”…..
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ISW...Iran Update, January 17, 2026
- The Iranian Regime’s Securitization: The regime’s plan to limit most internet and communication access in Iran to trusted Iranians demonstrates that the regime does not believe that the threat from this protest movement has passed and that the regime sees the protesters as enemies who will challenge its survival. The regime is implementing a phased plan that will lift the internet shutdown, but will not restore unfettered access for all Iranians. The regime likely hopes to control the narrative outside of the country by only allowing regime supporters access to the international internet.
- The Regime’s Response to Protests: The regime’s response to the decrease in protests indicates that the regime has no intention of solving the root causes of the protest movement, which will make the next round of protests almost a certainty. Khamenei could begin to solve some of these issues if he prioritized improving Iran’s economic situation over the pursuit of nuclear weapons.
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