Middle East: the temperature rises

By Richard North - January 8, 2026

Despite an almost complete news blackout from the British legacy media, it is still possible to stay in touch with events in Iran via social media as the protests there continue uninterrupted into their twelfth day.

In the absence of coherent, structured coverage, impressions count as much as anything, but it seems to me that as I watch the videos day-on-day, the crowds are getting larger and a number of new locations keep popping up.

The illustration above is a screengrab from a video posted yesterday from Bojnord, a small city in Iran with low population, close to the northern border with Turkmenistan. The people, I am told, are shouting to take back their Iran, and I have no reason to doubt that.

After a break of several days, though, the BBC has finally deigned to publish a piece on the protests, taking in events up to the end of yesterday, citing a report from the US-based Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) which has the unrest spreading to 111 cities and towns across all 31 provinces in the country.

That seems to be an increase on the number I reported on Monday, when I had a source talking of 78 cities in 26 provinces.

Oddly enough, a different source also citing HRANA has protests and labour strikes spreading to 285 locations across 92 cities in 27 provinces by the 10th day, so the indications are that the protests are spreading.

With no people on the ground, the BBC is having to dip into the same pool as the rest of us, and is therefore no better informed, but it’s useful to have its material to augment my own tracking.

In particular, it refers to footage from the Gulf port of Bandar Abbas, showing protesters chanting “Police force, support, support” before security forces disperse them.

The security response is hardly surprising as Bandar Abas is a new port, developed with Chinese money and is a key hub for discounted Iranian oil flowing to China in exchange for Chinese investment, infrastructure, and goods. With the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ main naval base also sited there, one would expect a sharp response.

To the east, on the border with Iraq, lies the oil town of Abadan, with a video showing a large crowd in the street, chanting “This is the last battle, Pahlavi will return”, a reference to the Shah in exile.

Later, security forces are shown shooting directly into the protestors – not an uncommon sight, replicated in many other videos in different locations – with 35 deaths having been confirmed to date. The real number of deaths is probably higher.

However, in Iran’s second-largest city, Mashhad, security forces are said to have lost control of some districts, with police, IRGC, and intelligence agents fleeing the scene.

Some videos show limited hesitation and passivity among regular police forces when confronting protesters. However, IRGC, intelligence, and Basij units continue the crackdown. Analysts say defections and passivity within repression forces could play a significant role in the expansion of protests.

Overall, a summary report confirms that protests are increasing and, significantly, demonstrations are increasingly taking place during daylight hours. Videos, adding to my impressions, show greater organisation and larger crowds.

Part of the protests include a shopkeepers’ strike, and the eleventh day saw bazaar merchants going on strike in 28 cities across Iran. For the first time, Tabriz, Iran’s second-largest bazaar, joined the strikes. The trend suggests that bazaar strikes may expand further in the coming days.

In addition, workers at the South Pars gas refinery – a vital source of regime revenue – walked off the job. It remains to be seen whether strikes will spread to Iran’s oil and gas sectors more broadly, but if they do, it will cause the regime considerable economic damage.

To keep the momentum going, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi has called for nationwide protests today and tomorrow. His message on Instagram – the most widely used platform in Iran – has been viewed almost 70 million times. Given Iran’s population of roughly 90 million, this is an extraordinary figure.

The likelihood, therefore, is that Pahlavi’s call will be heeded, and while the Wall Street Journal thinks that the protests aren’t yet larger enough to topple the regime, the combination of the regime’s undeniable failures and new American pressure raises the chances. This isn’t 2009, the paper says, when Barack Obama stayed mute to appease the Ayatollah.

American help, without going as far as direct military intervention, can include providing strike funds and secure communications for protesters, while severing communications of regime thugs and encouraging defections. US cyber and intelligence can help with “levelling the battlefield” for unarmed civilians facing an armed regime.

On the other hand, days after I reported it, The Times has confirmed the presence of US military aircraft at RAF Fairford, as well as at the US bases of RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. These assets may not be idle for long.

Aware of the possibility of a US strike, Iran’s army chief, Maj. Gen. Amir Hata, is reported to be threatening pre-emptive military action. In response to Trump’s threats to intervene. He says: “I can say with confidence that today the readiness of Iran’s armed forces is far greater than before the war. If the enemy commits an error, it will face a more decisive response, and we will cut off the hand of any aggressor”.

Despite the rhetoric, though, intelligence sources suggest that there have been no immediate public signs of Iran preparing for an attack. What the regime has done is to pay citizens the equivalent of $7 a month to subsidise rising costs for dinner-table essentials like rice, meat and pastas.

Nevertheless, shopkeepers warn prices for items as basic as cooking oil will probably triple under pressure from the collapse of Iran’s rial currency and the end of a preferential subsidised dollar-rial exchange rate for importers and manufacturers. This is likely to fuel further popular anger.

According to the Washington Post, citing the New York-based Soufan Centre think tank, “More than a week of protests in Iran reflects not only worsening economic conditions, but longstanding anger at government repression and regime policies that have led to Iran’s global isolation”.

If this is a statement of the bleedin’ obvious, it also underlines the deep-rooted causes of the current unrest, confirming the general view that the protests are not likely to end any time soon.

In a rare offering two days ago, the Telegraph ran a piece by Maryam Rajavi, leader of People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran and the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Under the heading “Tehran’s brutal regime will be overthrown”, she asserts that “Iran has reached an exceptional moment”, declaring: “There is no way for the clerical regime to return to its previous state and equilibrium or to escape uprising and overthrow”. The resistance network, particularly the “Resistance Units”, she says, is expanding across the provinces, and the younger generation is joining the movement in growing numbers.

In previous uprisings, she then remarks, the West merely watched, which benefited the regime most of all. This time, she says, it must stand with the people of Iran and explicitly recognise the right of the people and the organised resistance to confront the crimes of the IRGC and to overthrow the regime.

Given the silence of the British media, and the absence of comment from Starmer, the signs are not good this side of the Atlantic, but if Trump is prepared to do another “Venezuela”, things could change very rapidly. With the temperature rising, things must surely be coming to a head.