By: Arthur Popowitz

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has chosen defiance over conciliation at a moment when the Islamic Republic finds itself battered by economic collapse, regional humiliation, and a rising tide of domestic unrest. In a recorded address broadcast on Saturday, Khamenei vowed that Iran “will not yield to the enemy,” dismissing demonstrators as “rioters” who should be “put in their place,” even as rights groups report a steep escalation in arrests and fatalities across the country. The remarks, detailed in a Reuters report on Saturday, illustrate the regime’s hardening posture after several days of protests triggered by the plummeting rial and runaway inflation.

According to the Reuters report, state-affiliated media confirmed three deaths on Saturday alone, while human rights organizations say that more than 10 people have been killed nationwide since protests erupted earlier in the week. The unrest, which began in Tehran before spreading to western and southern provinces, is now widely described as the most significant challenge to Iranian authorities since the “Woman, Life, Freedom” demonstrations that convulsed the country in late 2022 following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini.

The spark this time is not a moral outrage but an economic catastrophe. The Iranian rial has collapsed to historic lows against the dollar, rendering basic commodities unaffordable for large swaths of the population. As Reuters reported, Iran’s economy has been hollowed out by years of sanctions, compounded by war-related disruptions, the destruction of parts of its nuclear infrastructure in Israeli and U.S. airstrikes last summer, and a chronic inability to provide water and electricity in drought-stricken regions.

Yet Khamenei, in his carefully choreographed appearance, adopted a bifurcated narrative that has become a hallmark of the regime’s crisis management. On the one hand, he conceded that economic grievances were legitimate, declaring that “the bazaaris were right” and acknowledging that market traders “cannot do business in these conditions.” On the other, he drew a sharp line between “protesters,” whom he claims the government is willing to engage, and “rioters,” whom he portrayed as subversive agents deserving of repression.

“We will speak with the protesters,” he said, according to state television as cited by Reuters. “But talking to rioters is useless. Rioters should be put in their place.”

This rhetorical sleight of hand—legitimizing discontent while criminalizing dissent—comes as the security apparatus intensifies its crackdown. Hengaw, a Kurdish human rights organization, reported on Friday night that it had identified at least 133 arrests, up from 56 the previous day, a jump that reflects a rapidly expanding detention campaign. Reuters noted that state television has shown images of individuals accused of manufacturing petrol bombs and homemade firearms, while Mehr and Fars news agencies—both closely aligned with the state—have emphasized what they describe as armed attacks on police stations and public property.

In Malekshahi, a town in western Iran, state-affiliated outlets reported that two protesters and one member of the security forces were killed when demonstrators allegedly tried to storm a police station. Reuters cautioned that it could not independently verify these claims, but it confirmed that reports of violence have clustered in smaller western cities, suggesting that peripheral provinces may be emerging as the epicenters of unrest.

Social media footage, which Reuters said it could not immediately authenticate, purports to show crowds chanting in southern Iran: “We don’t want spectators: join us.” The phrase has become emblematic of a movement seeking to break the inertia that often follows Iran’s cyclical protest waves—moments of mass mobilization that erupt with fury only to be crushed by the regime’s security machine.

The stakes have been dramatically elevated by an extraordinary intervention from Washington. On Friday, President Trump declared that the United States was “locked and loaded and ready to go” should Iran kill peaceful demonstrators, a threat that reverberated through Tehran’s corridors of power. Reuters reported that Trump did not specify what form such intervention might take, but his words carry the weight of recent precedent: last summer, the U.S. joined Israeli forces in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities and military leadership in a coordinated campaign that left the regime’s strategic posture visibly weakened.

For Khamenei, the timing could hardly be worse. Iran has suffered a cascade of geopolitical reversals since the Gaza war erupted in 2023. Its most formidable regional proxy, Hezbollah, was severely degraded by Israeli strikes. Bashar al-Assad, Tehran’s ally in Damascus, was ousted, depriving Iran of a critical foothold in the Levant. The nuclear program—long touted as the guarantor of the Islamic Republic’s deterrence—was set back by precision assaults that killed senior commanders and exposed deep vulnerabilities within Iran’s security elite.

Reuters has described this period as one of the most punishing in the regime’s four-decade history, a convergence of domestic economic implosion and external strategic attrition. Against this backdrop, the current protests represent not merely a recurrence of familiar discontent but a test of the system’s resilience at a moment when its ideological and material foundations are under unprecedented strain.

The authorities’ response has been twofold: tactical concessions combined with coercive spectacle. This week, the government declared an unscheduled public holiday, citing cold weather—a move analysts interpreted as an attempt to empty the streets without acknowledging political unrest. The holiday created a four-day break, conveniently encompassing the Iranian weekend and the religious observance of Imam Ali’s birthday.

Yet even as officials invoke dialogue, the security forces appear to be preparing for confrontation. Saturday coincided with the anniversary of the 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, the revered commander of Iran’s Quds Force. Reuters has noted that such anniversaries often bring heightened deployments, with riot police, Basij militias, and Revolutionary Guard units flooding public squares to preempt unrest.

The fatality figures remain contested. Hengaw listed at least seven protesters killed in cities including Azna, Marvdasht, Lordegan, Fuladshahr and Kuhdasht, while Tasnim, another semi-official agency, claimed that one of the deceased, Amirhesam Khodayari Fard, was a Basij member killed in clashes with demonstrators. Reuters, adhering to its standards, reported that it could not verify which account was accurate—a reminder of the fog that envelops events in a country where independent journalism is virtually nonexistent.

What is beyond dispute is the breadth of the repression. Rights groups and activists cited by Reuters say that arrests have taken place not only in restive western provinces but also in districts of Tehran itself. State media has publicized charges ranging from arson to weapons manufacturing, signaling an effort to frame the protests as an organized insurgency rather than a spontaneous uprising against economic despair.

For President Masoud Pezeshkian, the civilian face of the government, the crisis poses a dilemma. His administration has spoken of “legitimate demands” and the need to negotiate with protesters, but it operates under the shadow of a supreme leader who has made clear that the regime’s survival trumps any notion of reform. In a social media post reported by Reuters, Pezeshkian warned that Iran’s response to “any aggressive action would be harsh and regrettable,” a thinly veiled message aimed at Washington.

Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, went further, alleging without evidence that the United States and Israel were orchestrating the unrest. Such claims are a familiar refrain, yet their repetition betrays the regime’s unease: after decades of suppressing dissent by attributing it to foreign plots, Tehran now faces a public whose anger is palpably homegrown.

“I think the regime is really cornered,” Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, told Reuters in a telephone interview. “It cannot address any of the grievances and yet it cannot tolerate people protesting. So violence has always been their only tool.”

The resonance of that assessment is amplified by history. In 2022 and 2023, Iran’s security forces crushed the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement at the cost of some 500 lives, according to rights groups, and detained thousands. That crackdown restored surface calm but did nothing to heal the underlying fractures—economic stagnation, generational alienation, and a legitimacy deficit that no amount of ideological rhetoric can repair.

Today’s unrest, while smaller in scale, is unfolding in a far more volatile environment. Sanctions have bitten deeper. The rial’s collapse has accelerated. Strategic setbacks have punctured the aura of invincibility that once surrounded the Revolutionary Guard. And now, with the U.S. president openly threatening intervention, the regime’s calculus has become even more perilous.

Reuters, in its reporting, has been careful to emphasize the uncertainties—what can and cannot be independently confirmed, the contested narratives emerging from state media and activist networks alike. Yet the contours of the crisis are unmistakable: a leadership that oscillates between acknowledgment and menace, a population whose patience has eroded, and an international environment that is far less forgiving than it was a decade ago.

As Khamenei’s words echo across the airwaves—“we will not yield to the enemy”—they resonate less as a declaration of strength than as an admission of siege. The Islamic Republic has weathered many storms since 1979, but few have converged with such ferocity: economic ruin, social unrest, geopolitical humiliation, and the unmistakable sense that the old formulas of repression and deflection are losing their efficacy.

Whether this moment will crystallize into a sustained challenge to the regime remains uncertain. What is clear, as Reuters has meticulously chronicled, is that Iran is entering another chapter of instability, one in which the distance between ruler and ruled is measured not in slogans but in blood, currency devaluations, and the relentless drumbeat of arrests that now punctuate daily life from Tehran to the western highlands.