How Nine Months of Crisis Changed Daily Life in Iran
This Iran protests timeline begins on December 28, 2025, and follows an extraordinary succession of crises for ordinary Iranians: economic collapse, nationwide protest, deadly repression, mass arrests, internet blackouts, war, displacement, executions and another severe deterioration in living standards.
It began with something painfully ordinary: the cost of living. As the Iranian rial fell to a record low and prices continued to rise, shopkeepers took to the streets of Tehran. Within days, protests had spread across the country and moved far beyond their original economic demands.
What followed changed the lives of millions of people, including many who never joined a demonstration. Protesters and bystanders were killed or injured, families searched for detained relatives, communications were cut, and only weeks later civilians found themselves living through a new war.
Even the scale of the January bloodshed remains difficult to establish because Iran was largely cut off from the outside world during the crackdown. By September, a United Nations fact-finding mission said official Iranian figures put the toll at more than 3,000 people killed and around 25,000 injured, while warning that the true numbers could be higher.
This timeline therefore follows what happened to Iranians, not simply what happened in Iran.
Sources:
Reuters: Iran’s government offers dialogue to protesters
Associated Press: Protests erupt in Iran over currency’s plunge to record low
UN Special Rapporteur on Iran: Communication to the Iranian Government, 9 January 2026
Amnesty International: What happened at the protests in Iran?
UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran: September 2026
Reuters: UN mission finds Tehran committed crimes against humanity during protests
Why Did the Iran Protests Begin in December 2025?
The protests began as an economic revolt, after years of pressure on household finances culminated in another currency collapse, rapidly rising prices and worsening living conditions.
On December 28, 2025, traders in central Tehran began closing their shops and protesting, including in areas around the Grand Bazaar. The Iranian rial had fallen to roughly 1.42 million to the US dollar, another record low after losing substantial value during the year.
The unrest did not remain confined to the bazaar. Demonstrations spread beyond Tehran, and demands that initially focused on economic hardship quickly began to encompass much broader dissatisfaction with Iran’s political system.
Sources:
Human Rights Watch: Iranian Authorities Brutally Repressing Protests
United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs: ASG Martha Pobee briefs Security Council on nationwide upheaval and human rights concerns in Iran
Al Jazeera: Protests, strikes after Iran’s economic situation rapidly deteriorates
What Did the Currency Collapse Mean for Ordinary Iranians?
For households, the falling rial translated into a much simpler problem: money no longer went as far. Inflation was running above 42 percent, while food prices in December were around 72 percent higher than a year earlier. Salaries lost purchasing power, savings lost value and basic necessities consumed an increasing share of household income.
For shopkeepers and other businesses, rapid currency movements created another form of insecurity. Import costs could change quickly, making it difficult to set prices or know whether today’s sales would generate enough money to replace tomorrow’s stock.
The protests therefore began with economics, but the anger behind them was already about more than the price of food or the value of the rial.
Sources:
World Bank: Iran, Islamic Rep. — Data
Reuters: Iran’s traders, frustrated by economic losses, turn against clerics
Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, The Korea Times: The economic roots of Iran’s protests
Financial Times: Iran replaces central bank governor in effort to contain cost-of-living protests
Iran Protests Timeline: What Changed for Ordinary Iranians?
For ordinary Iranians, the months after December 2025 were defined not by one single crisis, but by a succession of events that repeatedly changed daily life, personal safety and the ability to communicate, work and plan ahead.
The timeline below focuses only on those turning points. It does not attempt to record every protest, political statement or military development. Instead, it follows the moments when the consequences became materially different for people inside Iran — from the spread of the demonstrations and the January crackdown to mass arrests, prolonged internet blackouts, war, displacement and the continuing economic pressure that followed.
Sources:
UK Government: Country bulletin Iran — protests of December 2025 to January 2026
Amnesty International: Iran: Mass arbitrary arrests, executions mark intensifying repression
December 28–January 7 — Economic Anger Spreads Across Iran
Within days, a protest over economic survival had spread far beyond Tehran and had become far more dangerous for those taking part.
What began with shop closures and demonstrations in Tehran quickly reached towns and cities across Iran. By January 6, protests had been recorded in dozens of cities, while students and other groups were joining demonstrations that increasingly challenged not only economic conditions but the political system itself.
The state’s response was already becoming violent. Police, members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other security forces used tear gas, beatings, shotguns firing metal pellets and, in documented cases, live ammunition against protesters.
Between December 31 and January 3 alone, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documented at least 28 protesters and bystanders killed in 13 cities across eight provinces. Children were among the dead. Hundreds more people had already been arrested.
For Iranians considering whether to join the demonstrations, the calculation had therefore changed remarkably quickly. A movement that began with shopkeepers protesting the cost of living was becoming a nationwide confrontation in which taking to the streets could mean arrest, serious injury or death.
Sources:
Human Rights Watch: Iran: Authorities’ Renewed Cycle of Protest Bloodshed
The Guardian: Iranian security forces clash with protesters at Tehran’s grand bazaar
Associated Press: A timeline of how the protests in Iran unfolded and the crackdown that followed
January 8 — The Internet Goes Dark as the Crackdown Turns Deadly
January 8 was a turning point: communications were cut across Iran just as the scale of the violence against protesters increased dramatically.
That evening, internet connectivity fell to near-zero levels across Iran. International phone connections and many domestic communication services were also disrupted, cutting millions of people off from the outside world at precisely the moment reliable information mattered most.
For ordinary Iranians, the blackout meant much more than losing social media. Families struggled to contact relatives who had gone to demonstrations. People outside Iran could no longer easily check whether parents, children or friends were safe. Journalists and human rights organisations lost contact with sources, while videos, eyewitness accounts and information about arrests or injuries became far harder to send out of the country.
The information vacuum also made disappearance itself more frightening. If someone failed to return home, relatives might not know whether that person had been injured, arrested or taken somewhere else.
Sources:
Reporters Without Borders: Media blackout in Iran: journalists isolated and information stifled
Access Now: #KeepItOn: Iran plunged into digital darkness, concealing human rights abuses
Why Is the True Death Toll Still Difficult to Establish?
The blackout made documenting the crackdown exceptionally difficult, which is why casualty estimates have differed so widely.
What did emerge showed the scale of the crisis. Doctors described overwhelmed hospitals treating large numbers of people with gunshot and pellet injuries, while morgues struggled with the number of bodies arriving. Footage from the Kahrizak forensic centre near Tehran showed rows of body bags and families searching for missing relatives among the dead.
But those images represented only places from which evidence managed to escape. Information from smaller cities was even harder to verify, while independent investigators had little direct access inside Iran. Different organisations therefore relied on different combinations of videos, witnesses, medical sources and identified victims.
The uncertainty remains important months later. In September, the UN-backed Fact-Finding Mission said killings by state security forces had occurred on a massive scale across all 31 provinces. It concluded that abuses including murder, imprisonment and torture formed part of crimes against humanity, while also saying the true number of people killed and injured could not yet be established with certainty.
That distinction matters: uncertainty about the final number does not mean uncertainty about whether mass killing occurred.
Sources:
The BMJ: Iran: Doctors come under attack as hospitals “overwhelmed”
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Scores Of Bodies Outside Morgue In Tehran Amid Deadly Iran Protests
Al Jazeera: UN fact-finding mission says US committed possible war crimes in Iran
Late January–February — The Streets Grow Quieter, but the Repression Does Not
A decline in visible street protests did not mean that the consequences of the uprising had ended.
By late January, the mass demonstrations had largely subsided. But the repression had moved away from the streets and into homes, workplaces, hospitals and detention centres.
Security forces continued sweeping arrests across the country, taking people during nighttime home raids, at checkpoints and workplaces, and in some cases from hospitals while they were receiving treatment.
Those detained included protesters, university students, schoolchildren, journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders and members of ethnic and religious minorities.
The absence of large crowds therefore did not mean that the crisis was over. For many Iranians, it had simply become less visible.
Sources:
Amnesty International: Iran: Authorities unleash heavily militarized clampdown to hide protest massacres
Committee to Protect Journalists: Iran: 3 journalists arrested as news trickles out under internet shutdown
What Happened to People After They Were Arrested?
February 28–March — War Reaches Iranian Homes
Millions Leave Their Homes as Civilian Damage Mounts
Within less than two weeks, millions of people had temporarily left their homes in search of greater safety.
On March 12, UNHCR estimated that between 600,000 and one million Iranian households, as many as 3.2 million people, had been temporarily displaced inside the country. Many were reportedly leaving Tehran and other large cities for northern Iran or rural areas.
The destruction continued after they left. By April 1, more than 115,000 civilian units had reportedly been damaged, including homes and hundreds of schools.
These figures describe more than destroyed buildings. They represent families suddenly staying with relatives, moving to unfamiliar areas or living without knowing when, or what, they would return to.
Sources:
UNHCR: Up to 3.2 million Iranians temporarily displaced in Iran as conflict intensifies
UNHCR: Middle East emergency — One-month impact report, March 2026
War Disrupts Water, Health Care and Children's Lives
Even people far from a direct strike could feel the war through disrupted water, electricity, health care and rising insecurity.
A March strike damaged the desalination plant serving Qeshm Island, cutting water supplies to more than 25 villages, while damage to electricity networks caused outages in Tehran and other cities.
Health care also came under pressure. WHO reported attacks on medical facilities and warned that disruption was making treatment harder not only for the war wounded, but also for people who depended on dialysis, insulin and other life-sustaining care.
Nothing illustrated the civilian cost more starkly than the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab on the first day of the war. In September, the UN Fact-Finding Mission found reasonable grounds to believe US forces carried out the attack, which killed more than 150 people, including around 120 children. The mission concluded that the indiscriminate attack amounted to a war crime.
War also reached ordinary routines. As Nowruz approached, Tehran’s Grand Bazaar — where the protest timeline had begun less than three months earlier — was unusually quiet. Shops were closed, prices had risen and Reuters found families struggling to afford traditional holiday purchases.
The place where the crisis began with shopkeepers protesting economic hardship was now struggling to function under war.
Sources:
United Nations in Iran / OCHA: Islamic Republic of Iran: Humanitarian Update No. 01 — As of 17 March 2026
WHO: Middle East Conflict
UNICEF: The brutality of war measured in children’s lives as hostilities escalate in Iran
Reuters: UN mission finds grounds to believe US committed war crimes in Iran, and Tehran crimes against humanity
Reuters: War hits Tehran’s grand bazaar as prices surge and shops shut
April–May — War Becomes Another Reason to Tighten Repression
The war did not replace domestic repression; human rights organisations documented how Iranian authorities expanded it under wartime national-security measures.
By May, arrests linked to the conflict were taking place across Iran. Police chief Ahmad-Reza Radan said more than 6,500 people described by authorities as “traitors and spies” had been arrested since February 28. Amnesty International, reviewing official statements alongside information from families and human rights defenders, said more than 6,000 people had been arbitrarily detained.
Those targeted included protesters, journalists, lawyers, students, human rights defenders and members of ethnic and religious minorities. Activities treated as potential security offences reportedly included sharing images of airstrikes, communicating with foreign media and expressing views about the war online.
The judicial response also hardened. Amnesty had documented at least 39 executions on politically motivated charges since the beginning of the war by late May, alongside expedited prosecutions and long prison sentences.
For people already living with bombardment and displacement, war had therefore created another danger: ordinary speech or contact with the outside world could now be interpreted through the language of espionage and national security.
Sources:
Al Jazeera: Iran says more than 6,500 ‘traitors and spies’ arrested since war began
United Nations: UN rights chief warns of escalating crackdown in Iran amid conflict
An 88-Day Blackout Makes Communication a Security Risk
For most Iranians, the war also meant nearly three months of extreme digital isolation.
Global internet access was shut down again when the war began on February 28. The blackout lasted 88 days, with restricted access beginning to return on May 26.
Its impact went far beyond social media. People struggled to contact relatives abroad, businesses lost access to customers and services, and independent information about both the war and domestic repression became much harder to obtain.
Attempts to bypass the restrictions carried their own risks. Authorities warned that using VPNs or satellite connections could trigger arrest or prosecution, while possession or use of Starlink equipment was treated as a security issue.
When connections finally began returning, Iranians described the experience in deeply personal terms. One person told the BBC that reconnecting after 88 days felt like being released from prison.
War made people less safe from bombs, but it also made communication, journalism and dissent more dangerous.
Sources:
The Guardian: Iran’s access to global internet starts to resume after 88-day blackout
BBC News: ‘Like a prisoner being released’ — Relief for Iranians as internet shutdown ends
BBC News: The clandestine network smuggling Starlink tech into Iran to beat internet blackout
June–August — Survival Becomes an Economic Problem Again
By summer, the economic grievances that had helped ignite the protests were considerably worse.
Official figures for July showed how dramatically the cost-of-living crisis had deepened. Iran’s 12-month average inflation rate reached 66 percent, while prices were 87.9 percent higher than a year earlier. Food and beverage prices had risen even faster, by more than 128 percent year-on-year.
Those numbers were increasingly visible in what families could put on the table. Iranians described cutting meat and chicken from household shopping, buying smaller quantities and watching salaries fall far behind basic expenses. One mother told Al Jazeera that a salary which had once covered a month’s household needs was no longer enough to pay for food alone.
Employment was also deteriorating. Official data showed roughly 450,000 fewer people employed in spring than a year earlier, while war damage, disrupted trade and construction slowdowns cost others their jobs or forced businesses to reduce staff. Reuters interviewed Iranians who had closed businesses, lost work or were using savings simply to support their families.
The economic circle had closed. The hardship that helped bring people onto the streets in December had not been resolved by summer; it had become considerably harder to survive.
Sources:
Reuters: Battered by war, Iran’s rulers wary of more economic pain and unrest if US tightens pressure
Al Jazeera: ‘The wealthy poor’: Soaring food prices hurt Iranian families
IranWire: Iran Economic Crisis: Inflation Hits 87.9%, Unemployment Rises to 9.1%
Children Were Still Paying the Price of the War
Economic survival was worsening, but children had already been paying a human cost long before summer.
During the January protest crackdown, children were among those killed as Iranian security forces, including the IRGC, Basij and police units, used unlawful lethal force against protesters and bystanders.
When war began on February 28, children faced another source of danger. US and Israeli strikes hit Iran throughout the following months, including homes, schools and other civilian areas. UNICEF reported by the end of July that more than 2,500 children had been killed or injured in Iran during the first five months of the conflict.
That overall figure should not be attributed entirely to one belligerent: UNICEF did not divide the total according to which military was responsible for each casualty. What is clear is that Iranian children had been exposed to two successive forms of violence — first during the state’s suppression of protests, and then as civilians caught in a continuing international war.
For families already struggling with lost income and rapidly rising prices, protecting their children had become another part of simply trying to survive.
Sources:
Amnesty International: Iran: Deaths and injuries rise amid authorities’ renewed cycle of protest bloodshed
Human Rights Watch: Iran: Growing Evidence of Countrywide Massacres
UNICEF: Child casualties in Iran reportedly exceed 2,500 amid ongoing war
March–September — Arrests Turn Into Executions
For some people arrested during the winter protests, the consequences did not end when the demonstrations disappeared from the streets.
Executions linked to political and national-security cases accelerated from March onward. Between March 18 and the end of August, Human Rights Watch and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center documented 59 men executed on politically motivated national-security charges. At least 29 had been arrested in connection with the December and January protests. Several were only 18 or 19 years old.
The speed of some cases was striking. Proceedings from arrest to execution sometimes lasted only weeks or a few months. Researchers documented defendants being denied effective access to lawyers, convictions based on vague offences such as “waging war against God,” and confessions that detainees said had been extracted through torture or other ill-treatment.
Some executions took place in secret, without families or lawyers receiving advance notice. Others were carried out publicly. By August, the UN human rights chief was warning that more than 100 additional people faced execution on similar national-security charges.
For families whose relatives had been detained months earlier, the repression therefore had no clear end point. Someone arrested during a January protest could still be facing execution long after the crowds had disappeared from the streets.
Sources:
Human Rights Watch: Iran: Ongoing Unlawful Execution Campaign Against Protesters
ABC News: UN expresses alarm as Iran executes at least 56 anti-government protesters since March
Iran Human Rights: At Least 100 January Protesters Identified as at Risk of Execution in Iran
September 2026 — There Is Still No Clear ‘After’
Nine months after the protests began, Iranians are not living in a post-crisis period: the war, economic pressure and political restrictions are all still shaping daily life.
The conflict was still continuing in September. Early in the month, an explosion struck a home during a wedding celebration in southern Iran, killing five people and wounding nearly 70, according to Iranian officials. Among the dead was a four-year-old boy. The United States said it was investigating the incident; a Reuters analysis of verified imagery and expert assessments found the damage was consistent with a direct hit and that the munition was likely American.
At the same time, the economic situation had deteriorated further. By early September, the rial had fallen beyond 2.2 million to the US dollar, while official 12-month average inflation reached 69.9 percent. Food, beverage and tobacco prices were rising at nearly twice that rate.
Even having a job offered little security. Official figures cited by Reuters put average monthly pay at roughly $125, compared with estimated basic household expenses of around $450.
For ordinary Iranians, there is therefore still no clean dividing line between crisis and recovery. War, shrinking purchasing power and uncertainty about what comes next continue to overlap.
Sources:
Reuters: US probes Iran wedding strike that analysis shows was likely direct hit by US munition
Al Jazeera: Iran says US bombed a wedding party in Sirik, killing at least four people
Reuters: US pressure on Iran starting to tell, as sanctions and blockade bite
Associated Press: Iranian families struggle to afford the basics as US ratchets up economic warfare
Iranians Are Still Making Their Own Choices
The story of the past nine months is not only one of what has been done to Iranians. People have continued to make choices about which rules they are willing to obey.
Mandatory hijab remains law, but many women continue to appear in public without a headscarf. In September, AP found women moving unveiled through streets, checkpoints and even some government spaces, while authorities stopped short of launching the large-scale enforcement campaign demanded by some hard-line figures.
That restraint does not mean enforcement has disappeared. Businesses have still faced closures and women remain vulnerable to punishment. But officials have openly acknowledged concerns that a broader crackdown could provoke further unrest while the country is already dealing with war and severe economic pressure.
The contrast was visible in Tehran this month: women were photographed running a public race without headscarves while, elsewhere in the city, a large state-organised wartime rally was taking place.
Iranians have endured extraordinary pressure, but they have not simply stopped making choices of their own.
Sources:
Associated Press: Iran hesitates to clamp down on defiance of headscarf rules as war and economic pressures mount
Euronews: Contrast in Tehran as unveiled women race marathon alongside regime military display
What Does the Iran Protests Timeline Show About Life in Iran Now?
The most important change is not one single event, but the accumulation of pressure on almost every part of ordinary life.
Economic insecurity led into protest and lethal repression. Arrests brought separation and uncertainty into families. War added death, displacement and destruction. Wartime restrictions made communication and dissent more dangerous, while some of those detained during the winter protests later faced execution.
By September, the economic hardship that had helped bring people onto the streets in the first place was even more severe.
What began in December as a crisis over the cost of living became a crisis over life itself: whether people could protest safely, contact their families, stay in their homes, earn enough to eat, avoid arrest, or simply know what the next day would bring.
Sources:
United Nations Human Rights Office: Iran: Civilians trapped between extreme State repression and violations arising from devastating conflict with US, Israel, UN Fact-Finding Mission finds
UNHCR: Middle East Emergency
International Committee of the Red Cross: Iran: Civilians are paying a heavy price amid escalating hostilities
War Did Not Erase Opposition to the Islamic Republic
The war changed the circumstances inside Iran, but it did not erase the anger, defiance and desire for change that had already brought people onto the streets.
Iranians do not speak with one political voice, and that distinction matters. Some never joined the protests. Some who oppose the Islamic Republic have also strongly opposed US and Israeli attacks on their country. Others have hoped external pressure might weaken a system they no longer believe can reform itself.
But opposition to foreign attacks should not be confused with renewed loyalty to the authorities in Tehran.
For many Iranians, both things can be true at once: they can reject a political system that has imprisoned, executed and violently suppressed its own people while also refusing to accept that their families, homes and country should become targets of war.
That tension has remained visible throughout the conflict. Iranians interviewed inside the country have described wanting political change while fearing what foreign intervention could bring, and wanting peace without abandoning the freedoms for which others had already risked their lives.
National solidarity in wartime therefore does not erase the protest movement that came before it. Nor does it erase the acts of defiance that have continued since.
The struggle over Iran’s future did not disappear when the bombs began falling. It became more complicated — and far more dangerous for the people living inside it.
Sources:
GAMAAN: Iranians’ Attitudes Toward the 2026 Protests and War
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Washington and Tehran’s Very Dangerous Moment
Chatham House: The wishful thinking behind the war with Iran
Resistance Is Also About Refusing to Give Up
Yet this timeline is not only a record of what has been done to Iranians. It is also a record of what many people have continued to do despite it.
Resistance does not always mean standing in a demonstration. It can mean women continuing to appear in public without the compulsory hijab even though the law remains in place. It can mean preserving ordinary routines during war, continuing to speak, finding ways around restrictions or refusing to let fear determine every part of daily life.
There is a resilience in that which seems to stretch across generations of Iranian history. Not because Iranians are somehow born to suffer, or because endurance should be romanticised, but because repeated attempts to control private and public life have repeatedly been met by people finding ways to retain some part of their own agency.
Sources:
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Four Years After Mahsa Amini’s Death, Iranian Women Defy Hijab Law
Associated Press: Iran hesitates to clamp down on defiance of headscarf rules as war and economic pressures mount
The Same Human Question Runs Through Shadows of Tehran
That same refusal to surrender completely to fear runs through Shadows of Tehran. Ricardo grows up in a city transformed by revolution, surveillance and political pressure, and resistance becomes part of the choices he has to make while still young.
For Nick Berg, that connection is deeply personal. Shadows of Tehran draws on his own experiences growing up in Iran during revolution and repression, with Ricardo serving as the fictional reflection of a young Berg who resisted the emerging Islamic Republic and became known as the Shadow Rider.
He is not fearless. What matters is that there are moments when obedience carries its own cost, and when accepting what is happening becomes harder than resisting it.
The Iran of 2026 is not Ricardo’s Tehran of 1979, and millions of real Iranians cannot be reduced to one fictional character or one form of resistance. But the human question is recognisable: how much pressure can people absorb before they decide that something still belongs to them — their voice, their dignity, their choices, their future?
After nine months of protest, repression and war, Iranians have endured extraordinary loss.
But their story is not only about what has been taken from them. It is also about what so many have refused to give up.
