On the Ground in Tehran
By 
We haven’t talked much on the blog about the situation in Iran…
Tens of thousands of Iranians poured into the streets on Friday night in a second night of mass, nationwide antigovernment protests despite a total internet blackout and threats of a severe crackdown from the senior Iranian leadership.
Videos posted on BBC Persian Television showed thousands of people on the march in the capital, Tehran, drawing supporters from what residents said in interviews was a demographically diverse cross-section of working-class, middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods.
A resident of Saada’t Abad, an upscale neighborhood in northern Tehran, described crowds setting ablaze a mosque and parading the traditional, royalist flag flown by the government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, which was toppled in the 1979 Islamic revolution. The resident, Ladan, 60, who asked to be identified only by her first name for fear of official reprisals, said she was protesting for the second night in a row.
As in the previous night, the protests were widespread, erupting in the cities of Mashhad, Tabriz, Urumiyeh, Isfahan, Karaj and Yazd, among others, according to witness interviews and videos either verified by The New York Times or appearing on BBC Persian. In each instance the videos showed large groups defiantly chanting for an end to the nearly 50 years of the Islamic Republic’s rule, with the scenes lit by bonfires and blazing trash cans.
I don’t know enough about Iran to say how much danger the regime is in right now; it’s not 100% clear how these protests differ in magnitude from the previous iterations. Obviously Trump threatening to blow up random things in Iran isn’t helpful to anyone, tho.
Photo Credit: By Ninara from Helsinki, Finland – Cropped edition of File:Nature Bridge and Parks, Tehran (27589907407).jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78157659