Venture capitalist pledges to be ‘one of the first investors’ in a ‘free Iran’

Senator Ted Cruz said Israel’s 12‑day campaign against Iran and President Donald Trump’s move to destroy its nuclear program have exposed the government’s weakness, adding Iranians are ‘rising up.’

“Losing wars has consequences. Israel’s 12‑day campaign against the Iranian regime & President Trump’s historic decision to destroy its nuclear program have exposed the regime’s weakness to the Iranian people & the world,” the Republican Texas senator posted on X on Thursday.

“The Iranian people are rising up & the Ayatollah’s days are numbered,” he added.

Demonstrations were reported across dozens of locations, from Tehran and Isfahan to Lorestan, Mazandaran, Khuzestan, Hamadan, and Fars, with protesters chanting slogans directly targeting the ruling system and the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

For the first time in the past five decades, pro-monarchy slogans have come to dominate the chants.

Security forces used live fire in several cities, including Nurabad in Lorestan and Hamadan in western Iran, where videos showed officers shooting at demonstrators who remained in the streets despite the crackdown.

Protesters killed by security forces

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) has so far documented the deaths of at least seven protesters, mostly killed on Thursday.

Iran International has managed to speak with the families of three victims.

In Lorestan, 28‑year‑old barber Shayan Asadollahi was killed after security forces in pickup trucks opened fire on protesters in the city of Azna on Thursday, a relative told Iran International.

Iran International also spoke with the relatives of Dariush Ansari Bakhtiarvand in Fooladshahr and Amir‑Hessam Khodayarifard in Kuhdasht, who were killed on Wednesday night.

The unrest has taken on a distinctly anti‑government tone, with protesters in Bandar Abbas chanting “Death to the entire system” and "Long live the Shah (King)”, while pro-monarchy graffiti and slogans appeared in Esfahan and Sistan and Baluchestan.

Recent reports said evening and nighttime demonstrations in multiple cities including Bandar Abbas, Azna, Hamedan, Qom, Qazvin and Babol.

In the restive southeast, a group of Baluch prisoners urged residents of Sistan and Baluchestan to join the “wave of freedom” and support demonstrations across the country, recalling that the province was one of the main hotspots of the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests and repeatedly faced deadly crackdowns.

Iranian protesters chanted pro-monarchy slogans in Qom, a core stronghold of Shiite clerics and the Islamic Republic, signaling a major symbolic breach in a city long seen as politically untouchable.

Spectators at a football match in Esfahan were also filmed chanting “Reza Shah, may your soul rest in peace,” underscoring the prominence of pro‑monarchy slogans in this wave of protests.

They called on people to reclaim streets they said “belong to the people, not dictators,” and to make chants such as “Death to the dictator” and “Freedom, justice, Iranian republic” echo “like thunder across Iran.”

Caution and support

The Paris‑based Narges Foundation, run by the family of jailed Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi, issued a statement on her official X account declaring that “silence is not an option” as streets once again see live fire, tear gas, beatings and mass arrests, and urging solidarity with families of those killed, detainees held incommunicado and the wounded denied safe treatment.

Former senior lawmaker Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, who once headed parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, warned in his own X post that “all the ideologies of the world are not worth the tears of one mother” and urged Iranians to ensure their hands “do not get stained with the blood of even one Iranian.”

Nighttime protests took place on Thursday in several cities across Iran, with demonstrators taking to the streets and chanting anti-government and pro-monarchy slogans, according to videos received by Iran International.

In central Iran, protesters were seen in Qazvin and in the holy city of Qom, chanting slogans including “This is the final battle, Pahlavi will return.”

In northern Iran, videos showed nighttime gatherings continuing in Babol, where protesters chanted “Death to the dictator.”

Additional footage showed demonstrations in western Iran, including Gohardasht near Karaj in Alborz province, Azna in Lorestan province, and Farsan in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province.

In southern Iran, protests were also reported in Kavar, in Fars province.

While demonstrators chant against the entire system, the government of President Masoud Pezeshkian has focused its response on reshuffling economic managers and pressing ahead with long-delayed currency reforms, betting that technical fixes can still defuse a crisis that has increasingly become political.

The renewed unrest was triggered by a sharp bout of currency volatility that briefly pushed the U.S. dollar to around 1.45 million rials on the open market, intensifying already high inflation and accelerating the erosion of purchasing power.

“Protesting the dollar is protesting instability; protesting a life that cannot be planned,” wrote journalist Mustafa Danandeh in the daily Ettelaat. “People who do not know whether six months from now their rent will double, medicine will be available, or their job will survive.”

A new old face

In response, Pezeshkian reshuffled the leadership of the Central Bank of Iran, reappointing Abdolnaser Hemmati and reviving a controversial push toward a single exchange rate—an idea long advocated by economists but repeatedly stalled by politics, sanctions and entrenched interests.

Hemmati, a prominent centrist figure, had been forced out less than seven months into his tenure as economy minister after parliament impeached him over exchange-rate volatility.

His return—this time to a post that does not require parliamentary approval—has infuriated hardline lawmakers and highlighted widening rifts within the political elite.

“This explicitly ignores parliament’s vote and shows disregard for the will of representatives,” said Zeynab Gheisari, an ultra-hardline lawmaker from Tehran. Another hardline legislator, Amir-Hossein Sabeti, said the move demonstrated the government’s “disregard for the people and the country’s economy.”

In his first public remarks after the appointment, Hemmati laid out familiar priorities: controlling inflation, managing the foreign exchange market and tightening oversight of banks.

It’s the economy—or is it?

The reform effort centers on dismantling Iran’s multi-rate currency regime, a system dating back to the Iran–Iraq war of the 1980s, when preferential exchange rates were introduced to subsidize essential imports. Over time, the widening gap between official and market rates turned the system into a major source of rent-seeking, corruption and uncertainty.

As the business news outlet Tejarat News noted, the policy “failed to provide sustainable support for domestic producers and created severe uncertainty for investment and production planning.”

The Entekhab news site cautioned that in an economy burdened by sanctions, fiscal shortfalls and political distrust, inflationary expectations tend to regenerate quickly once short-term interventions fade.

On Thursday, the president announced the immediate elimination of the subsidized exchange rate of 285,000 rials per dollar for basic goods and animal feed imports, saying the subsidy would instead be transferred directly to consumers to eliminate “rent, bribery and corruption.”

In unusually blunt remarks, Pezeshkian acknowledged that public anger was directed at the state itself. Dissatisfaction, he said, was the government’s responsibility, adding that “there is no need to look for America to blame.”

Many protesters appear keenly aware that Pezeshkian’s authority is tightly constrained by entrenched power centers, a reality reflected in slogans that target the theocratic system itself and its supreme leader rather than the exchange rate.

A photo obtained by Iran International shows the slogan “Long Live the King” sprayed on the door of a store in Isfahan, central Iran.