Iran International
After returning from Iran to Canada, Mona Bolouri said the unity and size of protests she witnessed firsthand convinced her that the Islamic Republic was doomed after she left the country a day before a deadly crackdown.
“I know it’s over,” Bolouri said, referring to the Islamic Republic. “I’m not afraid to say this openly, because I believe the regime will be a different regime.”
Bolouri, a 40-year-old Iranian Canadian, traveled to Iran in late December to visit family and was in Mashhad as protests erupted on January 8.
What she witnessed, she said, was unlike anything she had seen during earlier protest waves.
“It was the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen,” Bolouri said. “The crowd was so huge that I couldn’t even get to the front line.”
She described Vekilabad Boulevard, one of Mashhad’s largest and most prominent central avenues, filled shoulder to shoulder with demonstrators chanting slogans against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and calling for the return of Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s deposed Shah.
The scale of the turnout initially made her feel safe, she said, despite the city’s reputation as a conservative stronghold and its symbolic closeness to Khamenei’s power base.
That sense of safety quickly evaporated as security forces moved in. Live gunfire and tear gas intensified as protesters pushed forward, with the gas becoming so thick it left people disoriented and unable to see.
She recalled being helped away by strangers after losing her vision and struggling to breathe amid the chaos.
What struck her most, she said, was the bravery of younger protesters who repeatedly surged toward security forces even as shots rang out.
“I am a brave person, but they are on a next-level brave,” she said. “Aren’t they afraid of their lives?”
As night fell, Iran’s internet was cut, severing communication and access to the outside world. Bolouri said she realized her messages were no longer sending and feared her parents would be unable to reach her.
“It’s a different city now,” she recalled telling her family once she was back home.
She described streets stripped of traffic signs and surveillance cameras, pulled down by protesters to block motorcycle units and avoid identification. Fires burned at sites linked to the security apparatus, including banks associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The damage, she said, was deliberate and defensive rather than random.
One moment, she said, stayed with her. An ambulance drove toward the crowd—the only vehicle moving against the flow. At first, she thought it was responding to a medical emergency.
“I was like, why is it coming this way?” Bolouri said. “Why wouldn’t it go around? The other streets were still open for cars.”
She soon realized that ambulances were being used to transport security forces. “That’s when it made sense,” she said.
Although she did not personally witness fatalities, Bolouri said she saw multiple injured protesters being carried away as gunfire flashed through clouds of tear gas.
She later learned from relatives that the violence intensified the following night.
Her uncle, who remained in Mashhad, told her that from early evening until nearly midnight, the sound of continuous gunfire echoed through residential neighborhoods.
“They were crying at home,” she said, describing how older family members panicked simply from the noise, aware that something terrible was unfolding outside.
Bolouri’s flight out of Iran was canceled, but she managed to leave via a domestic route to Istanbul. Her family believed she might not survive if she stayed another night.
Now back in Canada, she says the experience has left her unexpectedly hopeful. Comparing the protests she witnessed in Iran with rallies abroad, Bolouri said what stood out inside the country was unity and certainty.
“In Iran, there was no hesitation,” she said. “Everybody was on the same page.”
Despite the violence and mass killings, she believes the uprising marked a turning point.
The scale of participation, the open calls for regime change, and the willingness of protesters to face live fire convinced her that this movement had gone beyond anything she had previously witnessed.
Bolouri said she would normally avoid speaking publicly about her experience, out of concern for being able to return to Iran, but decided to speak out because she firmly believes the Islamic Republic is finished.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.