Iran in flames as people tire of theocratic government

The digital silence over Iran is now more deafening than any official statement. For three days and counting, the nation has been severed from the global conversation, a dark void where a people’s voice should be.

Yet, from this engineered silence, images and reports emerge like ghosts from a machine, telling a story the authorities would rather you not see.

They show streets alive with defiance in Tehran, Mashhad, Yazd. They show flames licking at the night, not from accident, but from anger. They show flags of a deposed monarchy, resurrected not out of nostalgia, but as a blunt instrument to scorn the present.

This began, as these things often do, with the plain arithmetic of a gutted wallet.

Shopkeepers watched their currency crumble, a slow-motion collapse that finally snapped patience. But what started as a cry over bread has become a chorus for revolution.

The chants now call for an end to the Islamic Republic itself. The government, in response, has chosen the oldest playbook: it has declared its own citizens to be vandals, rioters, and the puppets of foreign enemies.

A state television host offers a chilling civics lesson, advising citizens to stay home and not complain if shot.

The supreme leader promises no backdown; the president speaks of fighting corruption and a foreign economic war, as if the trouble arrives only from outside the gates.

The numbers of the dead are whispered, contested, and grim.

Human rights groups tally dozens, including children. Hospitals in major cities are said to be filled with the wounded.

An eyewitness speaks of hearing hundreds of gunshots in a single evening. And all the while, the internet stays off, a precondition, rights monitors warn, for worse to come.

It is a curious strategy for the modern age: to prove your legitimacy by plunging your nation into darkness and threatening its light-bearers.

From abroad, the reactions are a familiar chorus.

An American president threatens to “start shooting,” although he is more likely talking about plans feared by his own besieged populace than the Islamic Republic.

Diplomats issue statements of commendation for bravery and condemnation of violence.

The Iranian foreign minister, speaking in Beirut, claims serious talks were underway until foreigners intervened—a tale as convenient as it is unverifiable in the blackout.

Meanwhile, an exiled crown prince beams in a call for strike and continued protest, his image flowing through the very digital cracks the state cannot completely seal.

So here we stand, watching a country on the razor’s edge.

The government speaks of unity against external threats while cutting off its people from each other and the world.

The protesters, armed only with their desperation and smuggled videos, shout into the state-managed silence.

The world offers platitudes, and the regime prepares its fists.

It is an old, sad story dressed in new, digital clothes: a people demanding to be heard, and a power structure whose only answer is to make sure no one can listen.