{"id":199553,"date":"2026-02-07T17:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T17:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/some-iranians-rally-behind-the-regime-but-public-anger-runs-deep-after-protest-crackdown-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T17:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T17:50:09","slug":"some-iranians-rally-behind-the-regime-but-public-anger-runs-deep-after-protest-crackdown-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/some-iranians-rally-behind-the-regime-but-public-anger-runs-deep-after-protest-crackdown-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Iranians rally behind the regime, but public anger runs deep after protest crackdown – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A heavy security presence accompanied a crowd gathered in a square in downtown Tehran<\/a> earlier this week. The streets around them were closed.
But unlike a month ago, when anti-government protests broke out across the country, this crowd carried pictures of the country\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a>, footage taken Wednesday showed. Some waved Iranian flags, children had their faces painted, and loud music played \u2014 something that was once outlawed by the country\u2019s hard-line ruling clerics.
Technically, the crowds gathered in Valiasr Square were there to celebrate the birth of Imam Mahdi, a prominent figure in Islam, prophesied to appear near the end of times and fill the world with peace, supported by Prophet Isa, as Jesus is known in Islam.
Politics was not far from the surface. Among the mostly religious songs and chants, the crowd shouted messages supportive of the government and, at one point, \u201cDeath to America.\u201d
Nearby, kiosks flew flags bearing the logo of Hezbollah, the Tehran backed militant group in Lebanon<\/a>, and took pictures in a cardboard cutout featuring its former leader Hasan Nasrallah, who was killed by Israel <\/a>in September 2024.
Traditionally attended by thousands of government workers and supporters of the theocratic regime, which has been in place since 1979, the Mid-Shab\u2019an Eid gathering appeared to be much smaller this year, perhaps a reflection of the shock many are feeling in the wake of last month\u2019s protests and the bloody crackdown <\/a>that followed.
Almost 7,000 were killed in demonstrations<\/a> across the country including in Tehran, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said Thursday. The group, which says that it verifies each death with a network of activists on the ground in Iran and that its data goes through \u201cmultiple internal checks,\u201d believes many more were likely killed. More than 50,000 have been arrested, the group says.
The scale of the protests and their intensity was \u201cunprecedented,\u201d according to Anoush Ehteshami, a professor of international relations at Durham University in the U.K. and the author of multiple books about the Middle East and Iran.
While it is hard to gauge the popularity of the regime, he told NBC News in a telephone interview Thursday that \u201cthere is massive unrest and unhappiness\u201d among large swaths of the population.
People may be \u201ccowed into silence for the moment,\u201d he said, but that doesn\u2019t change the reality for a regime that is isolated internationally and hit hard by sanctions imposed by the U.S. and other countries over its nuclear program and human rights abuses.
\u201cIt\u2019s getting hammered in all directions, and of course its currency is falling off trees, absolutely worthless,\u201d he said, referring to the country\u2019s dire economic situation, which has seen the rial hit record lows and inflation rates soar, leaving many struggling with the cost of living and rising prices for everyday goods.
Nonetheless, he said, an \u201cincreasingly small number stand to still gain from the regime,\u201d including government workers and members of the security establishment, as well as their families, which runs into hundreds of thousands of people in a population of 90 million.
He added that the economy \u201cis controlled by a cabal attached to the state machinery,\u201d some of whom profit from the international sanctions. \u201cGenerally, they control trade, and control of trade gives them a monopoly,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of these guys don\u2019t actually want sanctions to be lifted.\u201d
Talking to people inside Iran, no one really thinks things can return to the way they were before the protests, according to Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington-based think tank. \u201cIt just cannot happen, not after this level of killing,\u201d he added.
The fact that some Iranians had called for foreign military intervention was unprecedented, he said in a telephone interview Friday.
Some of those pleas came after President Donald Trump threatened military action to back up his promise to help protesters.
The U.S. military has moved aircraft and land-based air defense systems into the Middle East, while the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its attendant ships<\/a> are getting closer to being within striking distance of Tehran. But American and Iranian officials met Friday for talks to try to avoid a war<\/a>, according to two U.S. officials.
Parsi said there had been \u201csignificant rallying around the flag\u201d and a \u201chuge surge of nationalism\u201d after Israel and the U.S. attacked nuclear sites in the country in June. \u201cThat can happen again,\u201d added Parsi, the author of three books about Iran. \u201cWe have plenty of data to see how air wars tend to push populations in the direction of nationalism, unity and battling around the flag.\u201d
In Tehran, most are trying to push on with their lives. In the past, throngs of people would have voluntarily organized celebrations for Imam Mahdi. On Wednesday, it was organized by the government.
Henry Austin\u00a0is a senior editor for NBC News Digital based in London.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeA heavy security presence accompanied a crowd gathered in a square in downtown Tehran earlier this week. The streets around them were closed. But unlike a month ago, when anti-government protests broke out across the country, this crowd carried pictures of the country\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":199554,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-199553","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}