The Iran Insurgency

A review of the available evidence

Iran, the Sanctioned Economy

Before a military analysis of the demonstrations of January 1-15, let’s look at Iran’s economic problem and the origin of the December 28 demonstrations.

Iran faces a unique set of problems. Surrounded by US military bases, facing both the US and Israel that have stated that they want not solely its surrender but its destruction and partition, its scientists and military personnel facing assassination wherever they go in the world, its economy under one of the most severe sanctions regimes in the world with its oil and ships periodically stolen on the high seas. All the same, the people still need jobs and incomes and development.

Some Iran watchers fantasize that if Iran could convince Israel and the US of its peaceful intentions, that the West would lift the sanctions and Iran could have a normal economic life. Iranian American Virginia Tech professor Djavad Salehi-Isfahani expressed such a fantasy in a January 9 article, “The Economic Roots of Iran’s Protests”. The economist concludes: “Iran’s government cannot credibly promise to stabilize exchange rates or tame inflation any time soon. The one move that could offer relatively quick economic relief – and to which the government could credibly commit – is a cessation of hostilities with Israel and the US.” Leaving aside the moral bankruptcy of normalizing with genocidal Israel as a means of sanctions relief, the absurdity of thinking that a unilateral cessation of hostilities from the Iranian side would be met with anything but increased violence from the US and Israel should be apparent to anyone that has been awake for any amount of time in the past several decades (never mind since 2023). Salehi-Isfahani’s prescriptions - predictably for a mainstream US-based economist - are for “free-market” remedies: basically, letting the Iranian currency float. Like all neoliberal cures, this remedy would be fatal for the patient (which could be why the US prescribes it to its enemies). Netherlands-based economist Kayhan Valadbaygi argues that Iran has built a “welfare-warfare state”, but the problem is that it has done so “without a firm economic basis to maintain it.”

Many Iranian policy makers were educated in these US schools of economics and believe that if they can play by Western rules they can get sanctions lifted and enter a free market utopia. But as Nahid Poresa told Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone in an interview on January 22, a more realistic approach would be to accept the sanctions as a permanent fact of life instead of having false hope that they would be lifted, and commit fully to a “look east” economic policy with Russian and Chinese (also sanctioned) partners. To, instead of accepting the de facto dollarization of the Iranian economy, use the local currency to run the national economy and limit foreign exchange through capital controls. Iran already does many of these things: its multiple-exchange rate system is an evolution based on the sanctions situation. Industries have built a certain resilience in spite of - or perhaps because of - the sanctions regime which effectively shielded local industries from exposure to competitors. There is a barter trade with neighbours. There are subsidies for gasoline and bread. The Pezeshkian government’s challenge to these latter policies and the threat to cut some of these subsidies and to unify the exchange rate system - these are what led to the collapse of the currency and to the December 28th protests. Western-based economists looking at Iran argue the exact opposite: that the neoliberal reforms are the one good thing the Iranian government wants to do, and that the heterodox adaptations that have enabled people to survive the sanctions are deviations from orthodoxy that need to be removed. Like Israel and the US, these economists are trying to kill Iran.

Why would Iranian economic and political leaders go along with this? Financialization is the fashion and Iran’s banking system is growing more complex with a greater role for private banking and therefore opportunities for truly magical profits, as one Tasnim article from November argues (I read an auto-translation). A harsher assessment is provided by sociologist Yousef Abazari, who laments the naivete of Iran’s economic policy makers who don’t understand that economics isn’t science, that there are very different schools of thought in the field, and that the economics “experts” at the helm of Iran’s economy have the same fatal prescriptions that the Americans want - austerity, misery and oligarchy. Abazari asks sardonically, what’s the point of resisting America if Iran implements the same economic policies on its people? Iran has been attacked by many Western weapons, but among the worst weapons seems to be giving a Western economics education to many of Iran’s leaders.

Still, the most orthodox free-marketeers will turn to things like rationing, planning, barter, and capital controls as a matter of survival. Iran’s policies of solidarity with others in similar situations like Venezuela expose people to a diversity of methods for dealing with economic warfare. What most free-market oriented Iranian officials and Western Iran watchers agree on is that neoliberal austerity is the right direction, which is why it doesn’t come up as a subject of debate. It is the wrong direction.

Iran also needs a tech stack like China has to replace Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. so that people aren’t using US tech companies obsessed with their overthrow and assassination to communicate with one another. Iran has several allies that aren’t bent on its destruction and is full of educated scientists and engineers who make things work and can take the reins away from the Chicago boys. Iran could get out of this one yet.

The economic and university protests

On December 28, facing the end of the multiple exchange-rate system that immediately tanked the value of the local currency, economically motivated protests began against the loss of their purchasing power and a proposed austerity budget. There were more protests the following day and on December 30th, including at universities, where students also protested for their right to protest.

The Iranian president and other officials stated that they would change some of the proposed policies and look at better solutions to the economic problems.

That is the end of the economics discussion and of the economics protest. Beginning January 1, the nature of the protests changed.

January 1-15: A review of NYT and WaPo coverage

I reviewed the main news articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post on the protests from December 30 through to January 15. I was looking in particular at events described and the sourcing of the claims. NYT and WaPo are outlets that are against the Iranian government and in favor of US and Israeli policy towards Iran (regime change, destruction of the state, partition, etc.) I also reviewed all of the videos and comments posted by the pro-Iran aggregator @AryJeay on twitter, “Fotros Resistance” on telegram. I took screenshots of each important video and saved important text from the articles as a slight hedge against the impermanence of the internet.

There is little different between NYT and WaPo coverage in terms of politics, depth, or sourcing. None seem to have reporters present in Iran and bylines are from Beirut, Istanbul, or Jerusalem. Sourcing is often to “according to videos posted on social media”, which is a cheap way of covering world events. Both NYT and WaPo also quoted (if somewhat mockingly) Iranian news outlets such as Tasnim and Fars. There are also interviews with pseudonymous people who tell their ordinary stories of what they’ve seen, with last names not provided. Finally, for the all-important casualty numbers, US- and German-based human rights organizations are cited. The most frequently cited is HRANA, the Human Rights Activists News Agency. Alan MacLeod of MintPress news reported that the Fairfax, Virginia based organization received $900,000 in funding from the United States’s National Endowment for Democracy in 2024 alone. Also frequently cited is the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran (ABCHRI), also funded by NED, and the Center for Human Rights in Iran, also funded by NED.

On January 1, the NYT cited “footage circulating on social media” to describe protesters pulling a gate open in Fasa, chanting “death to the dictator” in Hamedan, closing their stores in Tehran chanting “don’t be afraid, we’re all together”. NYT supplemented their “videos showed” with an interview with “Yaser”, who saw protesting shopkeepers first hand at a bazaar in Tehran. On January 2, NYT stated that a 21-year old Basij militia member had been killed - the first casualty, on the government side, which the NYT sourced to Iranian government news agency Tasnim. On January 3, the NYT led with Trump’s Truth Social post: “If Iran violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.” NYT also cited Israel’s minister of innovation, Gila Gamliel, who posted to X, “Israel is with you, and we support you in every way possible.”

On January 4-5, coverage was dominated by the US raid on Venezuela and kidnapping of its president and first lady.

On January 6, the NYT reported that things had calmed down, and was reproducing Iranian news outlets describing the organization and violence of the protests of the previous day, mentioning “videos on social media” showing protesters firing assault rifles into the air while chanting “Death to Khamenei”. “But in Tehran, with the exception of the bazaar downtown, the university campus, and a few working-class neighborhoods, the city seemed normal, residents said in interviews and videos on social media suggested. Ski resorts north of Tehran were packed with affluent day trippers.”

But Reza Pahlavi made a call and an op-ed on January 6, calling people to overthrow the regime and calling on the US to intervene.

The peak days of the campaign were January 8 and 9, covered in the NYT on the 9th and 10th. On the 9th, the NYT was estimating 27-36 had been killed up to the 8th; also, citing NetBlocks, NYT noted that the internet in Iran had been shut down on the 8th. Notably, NYT cites no organization, no manifesto, no political demands, no slogans, no placards. Here is their description of the protests on the January 8th:

In telephone interviews, more than a dozen witnesses said that they saw large crowds forming on Thursday night in neighborhoods across Tehran, the capital, and in cities around Iran, including Mashhad, Bushehr, Shiraz and Isfahan. They said the crowds were diverse, with men and women, young and old. The people interviewed inside Iran asked that their names not be published out of fear of retribution.

One resident of Tehran said that the crowds were chanting, ‘’Death to Khamenei,’‘ referring to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and ‘’freedom, freedom.’‘ The chants could be heard from several blocks away in the affluent neighborhood of Shahrak Gharb in Tehran, which had until now sat out the protests.

Videos filmed on Thursday night showed government buildings on fire across the country, including in Tehran, as protests grew. While the protests were mostly peaceful early in the evening, violence broke out later in the night in Tehran, with demonstrators setting fire to cars, buildings and items in the street. A video verified by The New York Times shows fires in the streets of Kaj Square in the capital, with thousands of protesters flooding the area.

In Karaj, a suburb west of Tehran, a video verified by The Times showed protesters fleeing after gunshots were fired, though it is unclear from the videos whether it was security forces firing.

On January 10, citing HRANA and others, NYT said deaths were in the “dozens” (up to January 9th).

After January 11, NYT depends increasingly on “Videos shared” as their primary source. On the 11th, notably, the highest estimate printed for numbers killed was 65 protesters. The Washington Post ran an op-ed by Reza Pahlavi stating that he was ready for a transition.

As the protests died down, the casualty numbers leapt. On January 12, WaPo cited a HRANA figure of 490 protesters killed. They backed this up with “A senior Western official who was briefed on the matter”, who “said hundreds were killed”. The official “spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media” (!) On January 14, WaPo came back with a HRANA figure of 2,000 killed, an anonymous source speaking from the suburbs calling it a “full-on war” but who couldn’t see properly because she “didn’t have my glasses or contact lenses”. On January 15, WaPo came back citing Bari Weiss’s CBS in an editorial by Marc Thiessen, “There is no US downside to striking the Iranian regime”, with new casualty figures of 12,000 and potentially as many as 20,000. Diminutive German-Iranian lobbyist for Reza Pahlavi, Amir Parasta, gave a figure of 30,304. Parasta also tweeted offering Iran’s assets to Turkey, and of course praising Reza Pahlavi.

January 1-15: A review of the videos

In order to fill out their pseudonymous interviews, NYT and WaPo freely cited Iranian news agencies. In the same period, pseudonymous pro-Iran social media account AryJeay / Fotros Resistance aggregated a comprehensive set of videos from Iranian news, cellphones, and CCTV footage. One aggregator, IntelonIran, estimated a peak of 11,000 demonstrators on the streets on the night of January 8, before the internet was shut down. According to this source, 11,000 was the highest number of people on the streets. The economic protests were long ended and the violent riots had been ongoing for a week, so it is safe to assume all 11,000 of these were people working for regime change.

The five ways of attack

Rather than repeat a chronology, I will compile the five different kinds of attacks that appear in these videos. I made a rough map of the locations of the attacks as well.

1. The Jump. A crowd jumps a single bystander or security, beats him and/or burns his vehicle

January 1, location unspecified, rioters throw rocks at the home and burn the car.

Hamedan, January 1, rioters jump a security guard and beat him down (CCTV).

January 2, location unspecified. Shop owner, Ali Azizi, killed by 6 rioters.

January 2, Qom. Rioter sets a shop on fire.

January 4. Hamedan. Rioters jump a police officer and beat him.

January 5, Isfahan. 2 rioters jump a police officer and beat him with an iron bar. Cellphone footage.

January 7. Colonel Shahin Dehghan, Malard County near Tehran, stabbed to death.

January 7, Kermahshah. Rioters kick a man on the ground with his pants pulled down: this is a standard procedure, pull their pants down and then beat and kick them on the ground.

January 8, location unspecified, rioters jump a man and kick and beat him.

January 8, Ahvaz City. CCTV footage of a group of rioters overpowering an elderly man, beating him, and burning his car.

January 8, Noorabad County, Lorestan. Cellphone footage of rioters destroying a car.

January 9, Gohardasht, Karaj. Group of rioters jump a man and beat him. Cellphone footage.

January 9, Tehran. CCTV footage of armed rioters attacking a police officer.

2. The attack on first responders. Rioters attack ambulances, fire, buses or emergency response vehicles

January 2, Tehran. Rioters attack an ambulance.

Between January 6-9, rioters burned several Red Crescent centers throughout Iran.

January 9, Mashhad. An Iranian firefighter burned to death.

January 9, Mobarakeh, Isfahan. Photo of a torched fire truck.

January 9: authorities report 15 buses burned on January 8-9, 600 signs and railings, and the Metro stormed in Mashhad.

January 9: authorities report 50 fire trucks nationwide - a fire station in Mashhad, 15 vehicle in Isfahan, 5 in Ahvaz, a fire station in Shiraz, and the Red Crescent Building in Izeh, all attacked over Jan 8-9.

January 10, rioters attack and burn a bus in Isfahan. CCTV footage.

January 10. Rioters burn several buses in Mashhad.

3. Gun battles. A street gun battle between rioters and law enforcement

Kudasht, December 31. 13 officers injured, 20 armed rioters arrested, 1 police officer burned, one Basiji (22 years old Amir Hesam Khodayari-Fard) killed.

January 3, location unspecified. Cell phone footage of a rioter using a flamethrower against a police motorcycle convoy.

January 5. Yasuj. Armed rioter shoots at bypassers and security.

January 5. Koushk. Armed rioters attack a pro-government march.

January 6. Tehran. Clash between police and rioters in front of Sina hospital. Both sides claim the other threw tear gas on the street.

January 7, Charmahal, Bakhtiari. Close up footage of a masked rioter with a keffiyah covering his face and baseball cap shouting Marg Bar Khamenei and shooting off-frame with a shotgun.

January 8, location unspecified. Shooters ambush a police motorcycle convoy, shooting them as they drive by.

January 8, Kermanshah. Nightvision camera / CCTV captures shooters shooting (but not what they’re shooting).

January 8, Hamedan. Rioters kill a police major, Mohammed Javed Bakshian and 6 civilians. A news item on the aftermath shows destroyed buildings and some CCTV footage of the riots.

January 9, Tabarsi Boulevard, Mashhad. Rioting leads to deaths, including security forces’ Mostafa Abufazeli.

January 9, 8:50pm. Shushtar videos of rifle man and shotgun man, and of a female rioter with a machete.

January 10. Police claim to have killed 1 rioter in a firefight in Mashhad.

January 10. Police claim to have killed 1 and arrested 6 rioters in Ilam.

4. Attacks on buildings or on people. Rioters shoot or throw Molotov Cocktails at public or private buildings or at security personnel or other people

Arak, December 31 night time, cellphone video.

January 3, Zahedan. Masked rioters loot a grocery store. CCTV footage.

January 6. Abdanan. Protesters loot a supermarket, Ofogh Kourosh, dump all the rice in the street, and take selfies (does this remind you of anything?)

January 7. Location unspecified. Rioters burn down a religious bookstore.

January 8, burning of a Basij seminary. Location unspecified.

January 8, Alireza, 17, shot and killed.

January 8, 2-year old Bahareh, shot in Shahid Beheshti street in Nishapur, died January 15.

January 8, 3-year old Melina in Kermanshah, going to a pharmacy with her parents shot by armed rioters.

January 8, location unspecified. CCTV footage of rioters vandalizing a bank.

January 8, rioters burn the shrine of Sabzeqaba, CCTV footage from various cameras.

January 8, rioters burn the Shahid Montazeri mosque in Shushtar.

January 8, 15th Khordad Square in Shushtar, rioters attack a passerby on a truck.

January 8, Ardebil. Phone video of armed masked rioters attacking a grocery store and a Sepah bank.

January 8, Ilam Province, village of Lumar. Rioters attack the Keshavarzi bank. Cellphone footage.

January 9, Mahdieh Mosque in Karaj. Rioters burn the mosque and Qurans in the mosque. Whose operating procedure is that?

January 9, Sabzevar, Khorasan. CCTV footage shows a Molotov attack on a civilian house.

January 9, Mobarakeh, Isfahan. Torched a grocery store, totally burned.

January 9, Sabzevar, Khorasan. CCTV of children running from a Molotov attack.

January 9, Gorgan, Golestan. Several shops and other areas torched.

January 9, location unspecified. Rioter throwing a Molotov at a civilian home.

5. Attacks on state symbols. Rioters attack a governor’s office or police station.

Fasa City governor’s office December 31. Cellphone video.

Azna, Lorestan, January 1. Several police vehicles set on fire, 3 killed, 7 injured.

January 1, 9am. Lordegan Governor’s office. Masked rioters throw stones and shoot at police.

January 2, Police Station 11 Marvdasht (Fars Province), rioters try to seize the station and are scattered when police fire into the air.

January 3, Tabriz. Rioter uses Molotovs to try to set the Tabriz Chamber of Builds building on fire. Cellphone footage.

January 4. Malekshahi, Ilam Province. Rioters attempt to storm a Basij outpost and are scattered when police fire into the air.

January 8, 200 rioters with molotov cocktails attack the residence of Salam al-Zawawi, the Palestinian Ambassador. Who would want to attack the Palestinian Ambassador in particular?

January 8, attack on police station 126, Tehranpars. Police and Basij were killed.

No politics, organized on the internet

AryJeay commented: “In this year’s riots, we see no prior statements, organized gatherings, formal protests, or specific pre-announced locations. Suddenly, a group pours into the streets and riots in specific locations that are close to sensitive, infrastructural, vital, and security-military sites. They then steer the riot toward these locations in order to gain access to firearms and ammunition.”

Rioters always dressed in black and were masked. They moved around at night with confidence and fluidly knew how to burn motorcycles, take the rods off of street signs, wield machetes and swords, and use shotguns and rifles.

In confessions shown on Iranian TV, arrested rioters say they were recruited based on their online behavior and what kinds of posts they “liked”, then messaged and organized and trained via Telegram and WhatsApp, paid specific rates based on what kinds of attacks they could prove they did (using video evidence), and some were ultimately told they were of no value and shot by their handlers. “They had precise intelligence of coordination with separatists and terrorists on the part of US and Israel. “They even planned for each separated region to draft its own constitution, and they directed arms smuggling, as well as financial & logistical support.” The rates are around $6000 for killing people, $2375 for burning each vehicle, $850 for burning police stations, $175 for any other disruption.”

Other arrested rioters told news agencies that they felt they had been set up to die in fires, sent up into buildings to set fires only to find their planned exit blocked. Iranian authorities called this “project killings”, in which riot organizers killed other rioters with the intent of blaming the state for the deaths.

One arrested rioter said: “The same person who called for the unrest attacked me, and after some time passed, he shot me and said, ‘You’re no longer of any use.’” Team leaders pursued manufacturing deaths and provoking public emotions by killing their own operatives and rioters with close-range shots to the head.”

By January 10, likely due to the internet shutdown on the 8-9, the tide had turned and on January 12, there were massive demonstrations in support of the government (there had been these all along, including mass funerals, but this was the largest culmination).

Iran also jammed the Starlink network and reported arrests and unraveling of networks, safe houses, and seizure of massive numbers of weapons over the following days, before finally restoring internet connectivity more than a week later.

The Iranian medical authorities gave the following summary of all damage: 184 ambulances attacked and damaged. 6 completely destroyed and burned. Directly hit with bullets in Teheran. Molotov cocktail attack on an ambulance in Rafsanjan while on active mission. 54 injured. 4 hospitals attacked.

AryJeay gave the following roundup of property damage: 250 mosques damaged. 20 religious centers. Imamanieh mosque in Golestan province. Hundreds of vehicles burned in Teheran. 364 large stores. 419 small stores. Damage reported across 30 provinces. $5.3 million in fire department vehicles. $14 million in bank damages. 317 bank branches destroyed. 4700 bank branches damaged. 1400 ATMs damaged. 250 ATMs permanently out of service. $6.6 million in damages to electricity sector. 265 schools damaged. 3 libraries set on fire. 8 cultural heritage sites damaged. 4 cinemas (Tehran, Nishapur, Boruejd, Shahin Shahr).

Ayatollah Khamenei explained in a speech the state’s theory of how the riots had unfolded: ‘one group of individuals carefully selected, identified, and trained abroad. Others, malicious elements and criminals. And others, naive teenagers: “These are the foot soldiers. Their mission is to go and attack a place, like a police station, a house, an office, a bank, an industrial center, an electricity facility. That is their mission. The ringleaders gather in groups of 10, 20, or 50 people each, guide them, and tell them: You must go here, do this, and commit crimes, and they do.”’

The final Iranian government tally of those killed in the insurgency was over 3,000. AryJeay estimates ⅔ of these were pro-government security forces and civilians, and ⅓ were rioters. This is higher than the 1,000+ Iranians killed in the 12-day war with Israel and the US in 2025.

What was this? A military analysis

The US and Israel were open about Mossad’s support for the rioters and for their goal, the destruction of the Iranian state. Mike Pompeo tweeted “happy new year to the protesters and to Mossad walking beside them.” Mossad told protesters “we are with you, in the field.” Trump posted to protesters that help was on the way, and as the riots unfolded - attacking groceries, emergency responders, government buildings, mosques, and random people on the street to sow insecurity and terror - a US armada approached Iran. As that armada approached, the US-backed regime in Syria made a final push in the Northeast to reach the Iraq border, releasing thousands of Islamic State prisoners.

The riots may have been envisioned to have achieved more than they did - and they might have done, had the state not shut down the internet and starlink - causing the state to approach collapse just in time for a US invasion to finish Iran off.

The state didn’t collapse, but the war may be coming regardless.