In just a few days, nationwide protests challenging Iran’s theocracy exploded into a crackdown and bloodshed that blew past reported casualty figures of decades of previous demonstrations

The authorities are responding to protests with a ferocious security crackdown and near total internet shutdown.

Angry, nightly protests on the streets of Tehran, the ruler’s pictures trampled underfoot and set ablaze; statues toppled — and then the chaos, fear and death unleashed by gunshots.

Iranians made phone calls abroad for the first time in days after authorities severed communications during a crackdown on demonstrators.

Iran’s clerics face a familiar uprising driven by economic collapse, but repression, not reform, now defines the regime’s response.

The success of the 1979 revolution cannot be explained solely by mass mobilisation. Instead, it was the convergence of coordinated opposition under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and, more decisively, the ruling elites’ inability to effectively repress dissent that ensured its triumph.

The son of Iran’s late shah called for strikes on military targets to speed the collapse of the regime. Reza Pahlavi, whose father was toppled in the 1979 revolution that installed Iran’s clerical rulers, sought Friday to position himself as the leader of the country’s fragmented opposition.