Iran’s ruling theocracy is facing a convergence of crises that repression cannot solve: collapsing purchasing power, widening social anger, and growing international penalties linked to the regime’s crackdown. In recent days, reports from inside the country describe coordinated acts of street defiance by youth networks, fresh protests by workers and pensioners, and renewed campus mobilization in the wake of January’s unrest. The regime’s reflex—blackouts, raids, arrests, and propaganda—signals not confidence but fear of a society that is steadily shedding fear under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Opposition reporting from the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) network inside Iran says “Resistance Units” carried out about 50 coordinated actions tied to the anniversary season of the 1979 revolution—image projection, banner drops, slogan broadcasts, and wall-writing in cities including Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, and Zahedan. The recurring slogans described in the report— “death to the dictator” and “neither Shah nor mullah”— dismiss any “safe” and fake alternative to the clerical dictatorship and call for a democratic and free Iranian republic.
The operational logic is unmistakable: dispersed micro-actions stretch the security apparatus and normalize open contempt. Crucially, this political defiance is colliding with basic survival politics—food, wages, and medicine—so that “livelihood” protests increasingly read as indictments of the state itself, and it challenges the regime’s claim to public loyalty.
February 15—Ahvaz, southwest Iran
Bakers rallied in front of the provincial governorate, protesting the reduction in their flour quotas and the non-payment of government subsidies.#IranProtests pic.twitter.com/E0QuudYDos— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) February 15, 2026
Bread and Dignity
On February 15, ILNA reported a protest by bakers in Khuzestan Province, who spread empty tablecloths outside the governorate building to dramatize what they described as flour-quota cuts and the non-payment of state support for roughly a year. When bread producers accuse officials of pushing them toward ruin, economic mismanagement becomes a political accelerant.
The same day, retirees rallied in Kermanshah and Shush outside Social Security offices, demanding pensions that match the poverty line and access to affordable healthcare, according to ILNA; IRNA also covered the Kermanshah gathering as a “livelihood” demand. But in reality, most of the slogans were political and retirees called out the regime for its suppression and demanded the release of political prisoners.
Student activism is resurfacing as a parallel fault line. Opposition-linked reporting said students at Tehran University of Medical Sciences boycotted exams on February 14, read a statement demanding the release of detained medical staff, and memorialized a slain student, Aida Heydari. In Iran’s protest cycles, campuses repeatedly act as accelerators—turning scattered anger into coordinated action and widening it across professions.
February 15—Kermanshah, western Iran
Retirees of the Social Security Organization resume protest rallies, demanding higher pensions and access to basic services. As the economy continues to plunge, they have been abandoned by the government.#IranProtests pic.twitter.com/6MjvN9i0VA— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) February 15, 2026
Fear and Blowback
The regime’s fear is written into its own reporting. In early February, ISNA and IRIB News reported the arrest of 158 people in Qazvin province, alongside claims of dismantled “terrorist cells” and the seizure of Molotov cocktails and other items—language meant to criminalize dissent rather than explain it.
Repression at home is feeding isolation abroad—and exposure that Tehran cannot control. On February 14, state-run outlet Khabaronline reported that X began removing paid “blue check” verification from accounts linked to officials including Ali Larijani, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, and Abbas Araghchi, after criticism that selling premium services to sanctioned figures could violate U.S. restrictions.
From Zahedan to Tehran: Resistance units draw the red line against all dictatorships https://t.co/gaKUHDZnmo
— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) February 14, 2026
Foreign reporting sharpened the exposure: on February 12, WIRED cited a Tech Transparency Project report alleging that more than two dozen Iranian officials, agencies, and state-linked outlets used X’s paid premium services—potentially gaining boosted reach—while ordinary citizens faced blackout conditions.
As more activists linked to the PMOI regain connectivity after the state-imposed international internet shutdown, their inside-Iran dispatches are filling in gaps about the scale and intensity of the January 2026 uprising that were harder to document during the blackout.
In one of the starkest episodes described, the PMOI-linked report says that on January 8, 2026, Naziabad became a prolonged confrontation in which “rebellious youths” torched multiple motorcycles and vehicles belonging to riot-police units, blocked streets and claimed temporary control of them, and set fire to a bus used to transport security forces, all while chanting “death to the dictator.” In Takestan, an office of the Khomeini Relief Committee was set on fire—portrayed by the opposition as striking a regime institution and it adds that residents signaled approval by honking as clashes unfolded. State media, while blaming “rioters,” has separately confirmed extensive bus burnings in Tehran during those unrest days.
And the regime’s anxiety about organized resistance is visible in its own messaging: on February 13, 2026, parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf complained that foreign bodies “keep calling the IRGC terrorist,” then pivoted into a long denunciation of the PMOI invoking “17,000” victims and warning against “reversing” the roles of “executioner and martyr.” That fixation—broadcast through state-linked channels—reads less like confidence than a defensive attempt to delegitimize an opponent the regime clearly still treats as a strategic threat.