Iran Protests Escalate: Government Buildings Set Aflame as Uprising Hits Day 12

Telecommunication was also cut off through the Internet and telephone channels as more people lost their lives, and the protesters insisted on the fall of the clerical government.

The revolutionary wave that engulfed the entire nation against the religious leadership in Iran has reached a violent stage. On Thursday, the twelfth day of the unrest, the situation aggravated as government buildings in different cities were burnt by protesters. In response, the government acted by virtually shutting down almost all communications, shutting down the internet and international telephone communications later that night.

According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, which is based in the US, there are at least 42 people who have died since the demonstrations started. More than 2,270 individuals are imprisoned. In spite of a high security level, there are no signs of a decline in the movement.

Thursday evening saw neighborhoods all over Tehran rise in revolt. Crowds shouted in their windows and on the streets, death to the dictator! death to the Islamic Republic! said witnesses. Others took the stage in front of the former monarch to applaud, and this was declared as the last struggle before the exiled Pahlavi kin returned.

There has been an isolation of more than 85 million people as a result of the communication crackdown. Cloudflare and NetBlocks affirmed that the outage was caused by government interference. International calls to Iranian landlines and cell phones were not able to connect soon after the blackout started. In Iran, these digital shutdowns in the past have been preludes to more extreme military and police suppression.

When the streets were on fire, state-run television did not pay much attention to the events on the ground. Friday morning broadcasts by national news had given food subsidies a higher priority than the coverage of the outage in the country or the riots.

The conflict is based on a deep-seated economic crisis. Inflation has been pegged at 40 percent, making some staple foods like meat and rice unaffordable to a large percentage. The recent rise in the cost of gasoline by the government and withdrawal of favourable exchange rates of most commodities have only added more pressure on the population.

What started as a cry of increasingly high prices has become a general political revival. The death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in 2022 is the event that still haunts many Iranians and is still used to refer to the tension between the masses and the morality police.

As of Friday, the situation is still unstable. The internet service is shut down, and the world is still unaware of the true scope of the new confrontations.