On the night of January 10, Shahram Maghsoudi sent a final message to a relative.
“I am going ahead. Tonight is the night,” he wrote to a relative. “Take care of the family if I am not there.” He ended with two emojis: a red heart and a kiss.
Maghsoudi, an Iranian powerlifting champion born in Izeh, a predominantly Arab and Bakhtiari city in Iran’s south-west, lived in Baharestan, a satellite city outside Isfahan, one of Iran’s most historically significant regions. Like Iran, his life bridged ethnicities and regions.
That night, he joined millions of Iranians who poured into the streets across all of Iran’s 31 provinces after a call to action by Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last monarch. The chants “Javid Shah” (Long live the King) and “This is the final battle, Pahlavi will return” echoed through city squares and residential neighbourhoods, reverberating far beyond Iran’s borders, amplified by a vast diaspora and relentless circulation on social media.
What the world is witnessing today is not a sudden eruption. It is the culmination of the protests in 2017 and 2019 and the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising that was sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody for not properly wearing her hijab.
The regime insists its enemies are foreign. In reality, its undoing, like always, is internal: misplaced priorities, chronic mismanagement, systemic corruption, suffocating repression and a fatal inability to recognise Iran’s national interest.
Unlike in the past, when poverty was closely associated with unemployment, most of Iran’s poor today are employed. According to the Majles Research Centre, 89 per cent of households living below the poverty line have at least one employed member. Yet a survey by the Iranian Students Polling Agency, which operates under the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, indicated that 92 per cent of the public are despondent with the country’s state of affairs.
Revolutionary fervour has morphed into contempt, even among former loyalists. President Masoud Pezeshkian presides over an empty treasury and a nation in free fall, while Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s state clings to survival through censorship, mass executions and denial.
On December 28, shopkeepers and bazaar merchants staged co-ordinated protests. It coincided with Mr Pezeshkian’s address to Parliament, in which he declared: “They say raise wages; someone tell me where I should get the money from?”
By January 5, after reports of mass killings by security forces, Mr Pahlavi issued his first public call for nationwide mobilisation. The response was immediate, vast and organised. It swiftly expanded to well-off neighbourhoods and industrial centres. This “grey sector” of the Iranian society had remained silent during the previous uprisings, despite their grievances. Their presence this time directly challenged the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy.
The government forces responded lethally. They confronted unarmed citizens with AK47s, drones, tanks, assault rifles and sweeping communication blackouts. They even reportedly abducted wounded protesters from hospitals and executed them with close-range gunshots to the forehead.
They killed more than 16,500 protesters and injured 330,000 in 48 hours, according to a report from medical teams working inside Iran obtained by the Sunday Times. Most of the victims were said to be under 30. The speed and scale of the crackdown invite grim comparisons to the 1982 Hama massacre in Syria, when the Assad regime crushed an uprising by levelling entire neighbourhoods and killing 20,000 in 27 days.
For the first time since 1979, Iranians are not rising up against the Islamic Republic in a leadership vacuum. The revolt has a recognised opposition figure supported by a professional nucleus of legal scholars, technocrats, economists, civil society organisers and a highly skilled diaspora network that has been deeply engaged in Iranian affairs since 2022.
Crucially, Mr Pahlavi insists that his campaign is not about restoring the monarchy. It is about liberating Iran from “foreign occupation wearing clerical robes”. He has repeatedly emphasised that Iran’s future political system must not be decided by him, nor by any group claiming ownership of the revolution. Instead, Iran’s ultimate governing structure would be chosen only after the collapse of the current establishment and a period of transition, through a national referendum and a constitutional process conducted under international observation.
As I write, protesters have abandoned the streets for rooftops, chanting “Death to the Dictator”. Videos from Tehran’s Heravi district show that defiance has not disappeared. Their compatriots are taking to the streets in record numbers in cities from Africa to Europe and North America, asking for a united global action to stop the slaughter and atrocities continuing under the shroud of the internet blackout. The grievances that ignited this revolt remain unresolved, and history suggests they will return with greater force.
Whether the Islamic Republic endures a while longer is almost beside the point. Something irreversible has already taken place. A national will is asserting itself in Iran and among the diaspora. The old social contract, obedience in exchange for stability, has collapsed.
“There is a heavy price for living with dignity,” reads a message on Shahram Maghsoudi’s Instagram page. He paid for it with his life; many more Iranians are willing to pay the same price because for them, it is the final battle.
