Iran International
From the night of January 9, a family home in western Tehran became an improvised refuge for wounded protesters, operating for 19 consecutive nights as security forces carried out a bloody crackdown that left tens of thousands dead in the streets.
The three-member household - a dentist’s daughter and her elderly parents - treated injured demonstrators with minimal equipment until the last of them was able to leave.
For those struck by live ammunition, they took the added risk of bringing a trusted doctor into their home to remove bullets and continue care.
In the final hours of January 9, wounded protesters began arriving one by one. Some had been hit by pellet or live rounds in the streets; others said they feared arrest if they sought hospital treatment.
Maryam, the daughter, who spoke to Iran International under a pseudonym, said she initially removed superficial pellets herself. But as injuries proved more severe and the number of wounded grew, it became clear that several had been shot with live ammunition and could not safely be transferred to hospital.
“We knew if they went back outside, they might not survive,” she told Iran International.
For nearly three weeks, the house functioned as a makeshift clinic. The wounded slept there, were bandaged and monitored, and underwent procedures on mattresses laid side by side.
Maryam said she saw snipers positioned on rooftops firing live rounds at unarmed protesters. She said plainclothes agents, Basij militia members and other forces affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were also shooting at close range.
Shot again in hospitals
A young doctor who assisted at the house said colleagues in several cities told him some wounded protesters were allegedly shot again in hospitals or during transfer.
“It wasn’t one or two cases,” he said. “Reports were coming from every city. People were being sprayed with bullets. Some who reached the hospital with gunshot wounds were later found dead with bullets to the head. It is clear that crimes were committed.”
As the condition of several live-fire victims worsened, those inside debated whether to risk hospital transfer — a step many believed could lead to detention or worse.
They ultimately agreed to bring the doctor to the house, where he remained for several days administering pain relief and extracting bullets with limited supplies.
Will to survive
One protester shot in the leg said he believed he would not survive. Two nights later, the bullet was removed. Before him, others had undergone similar procedures for wounds to their legs, stomachs and hands.
Some left as soon as they were able, fearing identification. Others relocated to different cities rather than return home.
Those sheltering there described nights marked by fear, grief and solidarity. They sang Kurdish, Luri and Azerbaijani songs and mourned those killed. When images of victims from Tehran and other cities appeared on television, they wept together.
The father, Khosrow, said internet and phone disruptions initially left them cut off. Only after satellite reception improved and they were able to watch Iran International did they realize the violence extended beyond their neighborhood.
The house has since returned to daily life. But the family says the memory of those 19 nights — when their home became a refuge for people who could neither remain in the streets nor safely seek hospital care — will not fade.
They insist they did only what they could under the circumstances and say they wish they had been able to save more lives.
The protest movement in Iran is no longer selectively targeting certain symbols of the Islamic Republic, as it did a decade ago. It is now challenging everything the Islamic Republic represents, including the national flag itself.
One of the earliest visible signs of this state–society rupture emerged in 2009, when students set fire to a picture of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the 1979 revolution. At the time, the act carried such a strong taboo that opposition leaders suggested it may have been carried out by elements linked to the security apparatus, to justify a harsher crackdown.
Around the same period, protesters began chanting, “No to Gaza, no to Lebanon — my life for Iran,” signaling a shift from the Islamic Republic’s transnational ideology to a national identity.
The Islamic Republic used such displays of anger in state television propaganda to discredit protesters. Yet each time, segments of the public repeated those same acts, turning them into a new front of defiance against the state.
The display of anger soon expanded to other figures — including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and senior military figures such as Qassem Soleimani, who had embodied Iran’s extraterritorial revolutionary doctrine. Their posters were torn down and burned.
Public anger even targeted the Iranian national football team during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which many Iranians viewed not as a sporting body but as a representative of the Islamic Republic.
For many Iranians, the team’s international presence risked strengthening the state’s domestic legitimacy and global image at a time when large segments of society felt alienated from it.
The depth of the rupture became particularly visible in June 2025, when many Iranians celebrated the killing of senior Iranian military commanders by Israel. Military figures who had been presented as national heroes four decades earlier during the war with Iraq were no longer seen as representing the nation.
Burning the flag
Students at several universities across Iran held protest gatherings for the third consecutive day on Monday, chanting slogans against Khamenei and in support of opposition figure exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi.
During their gatherings, they trampled on the flag of the Islamic Republic and threw it toward members of the security forces. At Amir Kabir University, the University of Tehran, and Alzahra University, students set fire to the flag of the Islamic Republic.
The Islamic Republic tried in 1979 to combine national and Islamic elements in the national flag. It took the colors from the pre-revolutionary flag and added the phrase “Allahu Akbar” in the middle. This is the part that many Iranians no longer sympathize with.
Iranian law does not explicitly criminalize insulting the national flag, but it can be prosecuted since the flag bears the word “Allah,” and insulting Islamic sanctities can carry severe penalties.
Islamic Republic vs. Iran
The Islamic Republic, from the very beginning, showed little regard for many Iranian traditions and symbols. Khomeini and his allies attempted to replace Nowruz new year celebration with Islamic religious holidays, although they failed.
While the White House displays a Nowruz table with traditional symbols, Khamenei delivers his New Year speeches without a Nowruz table, with only a photo of Khomeini in the background.
For many years after the revolution, the national flag did not occupy a central place in the Islamic Republic’s public symbolism.
That changed during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when the display of flags expanded dramatically. Streets were lined with newly produced, brightly colored flags, and government buildings were draped in national symbols.
This was not merely aesthetic. It coincided with the intensification of the nuclear dispute and a deliberate effort to frame Iran’s nuclear program as a matter of national sovereignty rather than regime ideology.
After the 12-day war with Israel in June, the Islamic Republic made an attempt to revive some of the national symbols and motifs. At one point, after emerging from his war bunker, Khamenei asked a religious singer to perform a song about Iran. But many Iranians saw that as too little, too late.
The resentment between segments of society and the state — and anything associated with it — has intensified to such a degree that long-standing religious funeral traditions have begun to fade. The customary recitation of the Quran at funeral ceremonies has been largely replaced by music, and mourners have even danced at the funerals of victims killed during the January protests.
In certain instances, people have worn white instead of black, returning not to pre-revolutionary but pre-Islamic traditions.
Statements circulated by students at the University of Tehran, Amirkabir University of Technology and Isfahan University of Technology announced the creation of Lion and Sun associations, calling for secular governance, territorial integrity and free elections, and voicing support for exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi as a transitional figure.
At the University of Tehran, a founding statement said students were acting “in solidarity with the people of Iran” and in memory of those killed in recent protests, including four students from the university.
Similar statements were reported at Allameh Tabatabaei University, Iran University of Science and Technology and a branch of Islamic Azad University in Sari.
Videos shared by activists showed students raising the Lion and Sun flag on some campuses and chanting “Javid Shah” (Long live the Shah), alongside slogans such as “Death to the dictator,” “Woman, Life, Freedom,” and “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran.”
Some students also referenced the former names of their institutions before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
At Al-Zahra University, protesters chanted that the university should revert to its pre-revolution name, Farah Pahlavi University. A day earlier at Sharif University of Technology, students echoed calls to restore its former name, Aryamehr – a title used by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during the pre-1979 monarchy.
In several instances, protesters burned the flag of the Islamic Republic.
Pro-government Basij-affiliated students held counter-gatherings on some campuses, where they burned US and Israeli flags and chanted slogans including “Death to the Shah,” a phrase closely associated with the 1979 revolution that toppled the monarchy.
Threats of legal action and dormitory searches
University authorities and security forces signaled a tougher response as demonstrations spread.
The president of Sharif University of Technology, Masoud Tajrishi, warned students that the gatherings were “illegal” and said judicial authorities could intervene.
“The prosecutor has said this is not only a university matter and that we must step in,” he said, adding that some students had already been barred from entering campus and that the university could shift to fully virtual classes if unrest continued.
At Beheshti University in Tehran, security forces reportedly searched dormitory rooms late on Sunday in an effort to identify and detain protesting students.
Some students said they had received text messages informing them that disciplinary cases had been opened and that they were temporarily suspended pending committee decisions.
In Mashhad, students at local universities said participants in rallies had been threatened with expulsion.
At Amirkabir University, videos showed clashes between protesters and Basij members, with students accusing them of attempting to disrupt what they described as peaceful gatherings.
Habib Arian, a financial markets researcher, told ISNA that the turning point came on January 10, when the market recorded a one-day outflow of 9.4 trillion rials ($5.8 million), at the time the largest daily withdrawal of individual investor funds.
“That figure showed that trust, which is the main asset of the capital market, had been severely damaged,” Arian said. “From that date onward, the Tehran bourse was unable to return to an upward trajectory, and any positive fluctuation was treated as an opportunity to exit.”
Outflows accelerated as regional tensions intensified and speculation grew about possible confrontation between Iran and the United States. Investors shifted from equities toward hard assets, pushing the dollar above 1,650,000 rials and lifting domestic gold prices sharply.
Between January 8 and February 21, the benchmark index fell 15% while 18-karat gold posted a 33% gain over the same period. Gold-backed funds rose 20%, emerging as a primary destination for funds exiting equities.
“The 48-percentage-point gap between gold and stocks explains why liquidity has fled the equity market at this speed,” Arian said.
On Sunday alone, the main index shed another 103,000 points as retail investors pulled out a record 41 trillion rials ($25.3 million) in a single session, according to market data cited by Arian.
He said the stock market was now driven less by economic fundamentals than by political risk. “The market today is more hostage to political tensions and the shadow of war than to economic variables,” he said. “As long as geopolitical risks do not subside, the capital market will continue to act as a liquidity provider for parallel markets.”
The exodus from stocks comes against a backdrop of broader capital flight and currency weakness.
The rial has traded around 1,630,000 per dollar in recent weeks, reflecting deep structural imbalances, falling oil income and persistent uncertainty surrounding nuclear negotiations and sanctions.
Analysts say the combination of record outflows from equities, a weakening currency and rising demand for gold shows the erosion of investor confidence, with households and businesses seeking safety in assets perceived as more resilient to inflation and political shocks.
“In this environment, investors prefer the security of gold and dollar-linked assets to the ambiguity of shares,” Arian said.
Arash Tolou Sheikhzadeh was detained on February 6 when agents from the intelligence arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps raided his home about a week after he shared videos of protests held in Mashhad on January 8 and 9.
After several days without contact and with his phone switched off, his mother went to his apartment and found it ransacked, with broken windows and no sign of her son, a source close to the family said.
Guards intelligence officials later confirmed he was in custody but refused to allow visits or calls and warned the family to remain silent, saying their other son could face consequences if they spoke publicly, the source added.
Transfer to hospital in critical condition
On February 12, the family learned through a hospital contact that Arash had been transferred to Velayat Hospital in Mashhad with broken arms, legs and severe head injuries, including a damaged skull. He was admitted to intensive care with a level of consciousness of 2.5 and placed on a ventilator.
The first time his mother was allowed into the hospital, she could only see him from behind a glass partition after repeated requests, the source said.
“His head was bandaged, his hands and feet were bandaged, and he was completely unconscious,” the source said. “When she asked why her son was like this, the officer told her, ‘We did nothing. He had a stroke.’”
Family members said Arash had not been injured during the protests and had continued going to work in the days before his arrest.
Life support cut despite signs of improvement
Arash’s condition showed relative improvement during his stay in intensive care, according to a hospital source who contacted the family. His level of consciousness rose from 2.5 to 5 over three days.
Despite this, his ventilator was switched off on February 15, leading to his death, the source said.
“His condition was clearly getting better,” the source said. “But they turned off the ventilator and effectively killed him.”
When relatives went to the hospital after learning of his death, security personnel denied them access and told them he was alive and had been moved to another ward, the source added.
Burial under tight security
Authorities informed Arash’s mother on February 20 that his body would be handed over the next day. They imposed conditions including no autopsy, a quiet burial and attendance limited to immediate relatives.
“They said they would hand over the body. You are not allowed an autopsy. A quiet burial, only first-degree relatives. Wearing bright clothes, clapping, celebrating, dancing – none of that is permitted. Very quietly. Otherwise, we will not release the body,” the source said.
The body was delivered on Saturday, February 21, at Behesht Reza cemetery in Mashhad, where plainclothes and uniformed forces were deployed in large numbers. The handover was delayed beyond the announced time, the source said.
Despite warnings not to open the shroud, Arash’s mother and relatives briefly uncovered his face before burial.
“When they brought the body, his face was bruised and swollen and there was a clear baton mark on his fractured skull,” the source said. “They tortured him badly.”
A young man active on social media
Arash, born on December 14, 1988, lived alone in Mashhad and worked as a barista at a café. His Instagram posts showed an interest in social and political issues. He had used the hashtag “Revolution 1401” in support of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising and in one earlier post criticized what he described as superstitious religious beliefs, warning that ignorance lay at the root of many problems.
Arash’s mobile phone remains in the possession of Guards intelligence, the source close to the family said. Friends have noticed that his Instagram account appears to remain active, suggesting that security agents may be monitoring the social media activity of his contacts.
