Why This Story Matters
For more than two decades, Iranians have repeatedly taken to the streets to challenge a regime that answers peaceful demands for dignity with bullets, prisons, and torture. From students beaten in university dormitories in 1999 to entire crowds killed in January 2026, the pattern is consistent: any call for basic rights is treated as a threat to be eliminated.
This page is written for readers outside Iran who are now seeing images of protests, funerals, and crackdowns and asking what is really happening. It explains that today’s struggle is not a sudden crisis, but the latest chapter in a long conflict between an authoritarian system and a population that has never stopped pushing for a free, democratic, and secular Iran.
This page is written for readers outside Iran who are now seeing images of protests, funerals, and crackdowns and asking what is really happening.
Throughout the page, you will find references and links to reporting by journalists, human‑rights organizations, and researchers so you can verify facts, explore primary sources, and understand how independent observers have documented these events.
The Islamic Regime
One point is essential to understand from the outset: the Iranian people are not the Islamic regime that governs them. Since 1979, a small ruling elite has held power in the name of religion and has used security forces, courts, and militias to control a population that has never had a genuine chance to choose its own system in a free and fair vote. Many Iranians describe themselves as hostages inside their own country, living under a state that punishes ordinary political speech, jails journalists and activists, and has repeatedly shot unarmed protesters in the streets.
The Islamic Republic is structured as a theocracy in which ultimate authority rests with the Supreme Leader and unelected bodies such as the Guardian Council and the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), not with elected presidents or parliaments. Elections take place, but candidates are heavily vetted and many are disqualified, which means real competition and peaceful change through the ballot box are structurally limited.
Over more than four decades, this system has been linked to major human‑rights abuses: mass executions of political prisoners in the 1980s, systematic discrimination against women and ethnic and religious minorities, and repeated lethal crackdowns on large‑scale protests. Reports by human‑rights organizations and UN‑mandated investigations document patterns of torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings, including during the Mahsa Amini protests in 2022–2023 and the 2025–2026 uprising.
Outside its borders, the same state has built a regional network of armed groups. Research from institutions such as the Wilson Center, CSIS, and the Council on Foreign Relations shows how the IRGC and its Quds Force have funded, armed, and trained organizations like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, several Iraqi militias, and the Houthis in Yemen. These groups have carried out rocket attacks, bombings, and drone strikes, and are central to why Iran is widely described as a leading state sponsor of terrorism.
European parliaments and policy institutes have increasingly argued for putting the IRGC itself on terrorist lists, highlighting a continuity between domestic repression and regional proxy warfare. The same forces that fire on protesters in Tehran, Shiraz, and Ahvaz also train and equip militias that destabilize Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. This is why many Iranians speak of the regime as something imposed on their society rather than as a legitimate expression of it.
Decades of Uprisings
Since the late 1990s, each generation in Iran has faced the regime in the streets, learned from earlier waves, and passed that experience on. The list below highlights key moments in that continuous story of resistance.
Key Numbers at a Glance
These figures are based on reporting by journalists, human‑rights monitors, and researchers. In many cases, exact numbers are contested, but even conservative estimates show how high the human cost has been.
2025–2026: The Cost in Numbers
These data represent minimum estimates verified by human rights groups.
Prince Reza Pahlavi and the Opposition
Prince Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah, is one of the most visible opposition figures calling for a secular and democratic Iran. Academic and journalistic profiles describe him as someone who supports a future system based on human rights, separation of religion and state, and free elections, rather than a simple return to the pre‑1979 order.
In interviews and speeches, he has emphasized that the form of a future state should ultimately be decided by the people of Iran in a free vote, and he has backed ideas such as an interim transitional council to manage the shift away from the Islamic Republic. During the Woman, Life, Freedom protests and the 2025–2026 uprising, he promoted coordinated tactics like synchronized evening protests to increase participation while reducing individual risk.
By 2026, many of the largest rallies inside and outside Iran have centered on his name and proposals. In Toronto, an estimated 350,000 people marched on 14 February 2026 in what Canadian media described as one of the largest Iranian diaspora protests in history, carrying the pre‑1979 lion‑and‑sun flag and photos of those killed in Iran.
Earlier in the same month, large crowds gathered in Toronto’s central square for a Day of Action in support of anti‑regime protesters, while in Munich more than 200,000 people demonstrated for regime change and listened to Reza Pahlavi’s call for Western governments to close regime embassies and sanction the IRGC. Reports from outlets such as The Jerusalem Post and European media describe these events as part of a global wave of protests that treat him as a unifying symbol of the opposition.
There is still debate among Iranians about monarchy versus a republic and about the exact political form of a post‑Islamic Republic Iran. However, at many of the largest public gatherings in 2026, both inside and outside the country, he is presented by organizers as the figure best placed to represent the movement internationally and to speak on behalf of those seeking a democratic, secular Iran.
Toronto Rallies in Support
In February 2026, hundreds of thousands gathered in Toronto for massive demonstrations in solidarity with the Iranian people and the movement for regime change.
TLDR Summary
- 01 The Islamic Republic is a theocratic security state that has repeatedly used lethal force against its own population during major protest waves, including the killings of November 2019 and the massacres of January 2026.
- 02 Independent investigations suggest that tens of thousands of protesters were killed in early January 2026 alone, with media and rights groups citing ranges between roughly 30,000 and 36,500 deaths, while a U.S. presidential statement has cited 32,000 and later said the real number is much higher.
- 03 For decades, the regime has supported and directed armed proxies such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and several Iraqi and Yemeni militias, extending its influence through violence while restricting basic freedoms at home.
- 04 The Iranian population is distinct from the regime that rules over it. Many Iranians describe themselves as hostages inside their own country and have shown, again and again, that they want a free, democratic, and secular future.
- 05 Prince Reza Pahlavi has emerged as a central opposition figure, drawing very large crowds in cities such as Toronto and Munich and being presented by many organizers as a unifying symbol of the movement for regime change.
