Six Dead as Protests Turn Deadly in Iran

Iran is once again on the brink. Nearly five decades after the fall of the Shah, the streets are burning with anger, and history seems to be repeating itself.

At least six people were killed Thursday as furious protests over Iran’s collapsing economy swept through provincial towns — the deadliest outbreak of unrest since last summer’s clashes with Israel. Security forces opened fire in the towns of Lordegan and Azna after demonstrators torched government offices and clashed with police, officials confirmed.

Authorities said five protesters and one security officer died in the chaos. Witnesses described tear gas filling the streets as hundreds shouted for change and chanted against soaring prices and corruption.

“We can’t feed our families anymore,” one protester from western Iran told the reformist daily Etemad. “They promised reform. We got nothing but hunger.”

The turmoil has reignited memories of Iran’s last revolution. In a resurfaced 1980 interview, former Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi — who ruled Iran from 1941 until his overthrow in 1979 — reflected on how history might remember him.

“If they read history,” Pahlavi said, “they will see what it was before my father, what it was when I took over, and what it was when I left.”

His words, once dismissed as self-serving, now ring hauntingly familiar as Iran faces its worst economic crisis in decades. The rial has plunged to roughly 1.4 million to the dollar — an all-time low that has wiped out savings and fueled fury in the streets.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist physician-turned-politician elected just months ago, is now facing the first major test of his presidency. He has urged restraint and dialogue but admitted the country’s options are limited under crushing Western sanctions.

“I hear the pain of our people,” Pezeshkian said in a televised address Thursday night. “We will not solve this crisis with bullets or slogans — only through cooperation and truth.”

But patience is running thin. Human rights organizations confirmed several civilian deaths and dozens of arrests as the government moved to quash dissent. State media, meanwhile, reported that a 21-year-old Basij militia volunteer was killed during protests in Lorestan province.

The protests come just months after Iran’s costly confrontation with Israel and amid renewed tension over its nuclear program. Many demonstrators have gone beyond economic grievances, calling for sweeping political change and openly criticizing the country’s religious leadership.

Videos posted online show crowds chanting “Death to the dictator!” — a slogan not heard this widely since the 2022 uprising over Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody.

“The government is losing its last thread of legitimacy,” said Iranian analyst Reza Alizadeh, speaking from exile in Paris. “People no longer believe in promises. They want their lives back.”

As night fell on Thursday, security checkpoints and armored vehicles appeared across provincial capitals. Internet speeds were throttled. And inside Tehran, residents said the air felt eerily familiar — like the days before the revolution that changed everything.