From AP News: Iran’s government cut off the country from the internet and international telephone calls Thursday night as a nighttime demonstration called by the country’s exiled crown prince drew a mass of protesters to shout from their windows and storm the streets.
The protest that went on into Friday morning represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Demonstrations have included cries in support of the shah, something that could bring a death sentence in the past but now underlines the anger fueling the protests that began over Iran’s ailing economy.
The demonstrations that have popped up in cities and rural towns across Iran continued Thursday. More markets and bazaars shut down in support of the protesters. So far, violence around the demonstrations has killed at least 42 people while more than 2,270 others have been detained, said the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
The growth of the protests increases the pressure on Iran’s civilian government and its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Calls to landlines and mobile phones “from Dubai to Iran” failed, ABC News reported.
Internet firm CloudFlare attributed the internet outage to Iranian government interference. Advocacy group NetBlocks supported that assessment.
In the past, outages such as this preceded strong government crackdowns against protesters, the report notes.
Watch #TheBreakfastShow with @ParmeshwarBawa | Nationwide Internet Blackout In Iran Amid Protests After Exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi’s Rallying Call
NDTV’s @GaurieD, @AdityaRajKaul share more details pic.twitter.com/nOKXMuZgfq
— NDTV (@ndtv) January 9, 2026
Read more at AP News
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