SOS Iran is a network created to help activists inside Iran connect and operate securely when communication is risky or disrupted. Participants are assigned an SOS number\u2014an internal identifier used to protect identities while allowing organizers to verify a person\u2019s role, route messages or footage through trusted channels, and track reports without exposing names or locations.<\/p>\n
To reach me, the protesters used virtual private networks (VPNs) while disguising their locations, and the slow speed and instability of the internet connection made communication difficult at best, with audio cutting in and out.<\/p>\n That interview took place as Iran entered a seventh consecutive night of protests\u2014an uprising that participants said had jumped from city to city and, in the span of a week, shifted from economic rage to direct political defiance.<\/p>\n Even the broken connections felt like part of the story. Foroutan (SOS-3390) described the regime\u2019s familiar \u201cplaybook.\u201d When demonstrations begin, authorities first weaken the internet, then cut it off entirely. He insisted the most brutal crackdowns often follow during those blackout windows, when people can\u2019t show the world what\u2019s happening and can\u2019t coordinate easily across neighborhoods.<\/p>\n Still, the speakers noted, the movement learned to operate inside those constraints. They described protests built around small groups, decentralized upload systems, and networks designed to survive arrests, infiltration, and disruption.<\/p>\n Hesam (SOS-3322), as relayed by Foroutan, said Iran was \u201cstarting the seventh night of protests inside Iran in over 35 cities,\u201d ranging from large population centers to smaller towns. Hesam did not describe a slow roll of sporadic unrest. Instead, he listed city names as if he were tracking a live map, naming places where activity was happening \u201cas we\u2019re speaking right now during this interview.\u201d<\/p>\n In those accounts, the size of each protest varied sharply by location, but the emphasis stayed on method over spectacle. Hesam explained that organizers trained people to begin in small groups in their local areas. That approach, he said, allowed protests to ignite widely without depending on one giant gathering that security forces could surround. His most conservative estimate put crowds \u201cof at least 500 to over 8,000, depending on the city and the location,\u201d while acknowledging that some videos suggested larger numbers in certain streets.<\/p>\n With the protests widening, the death toll became one of the most urgent and contested points. Hesam asserted that activists knew \u201c20 people have been killed.\u201d He said they had names for 15, while five remained unnamed but counted.<\/p>\n As we went to press, 30 people were confirmed to have been killed in the protests, and there appeared to be many more; the 30 were identified by name and confirmed from multiple sources.<\/p>\n He also rejected reports that a person described publicly as a \u201cvolunteer of the Basij or IRGC,\u201d had been killed, framing it as \u201ca trick of the government,\u201d and maintaining that the man had been a protester and that the regime wanted \u201cone casualty on their own side.\u201d<\/p>\n Hadis Najafi (SOS-3607), speaking from inside Iran, described the uprising\u2019s first spark as bluntly economic. \u201cWhen this thing started seven days ago from the bazaar, which is the big market in downtown,\u201d she said, people were \u201creally only protesting against the quality of life.\u201d She described a currency collapse so destabilizing that ordinary selling felt wrong. Stores were closing down, she said, and even store owners refused to sell because \u201cthose prices are not right.\u201d<\/p>\n At first, she insisted, the mood leaned toward restraint. People wanted \u201cto just protest peacefully about the condition of life before things got to where they got.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, the regime forced the situation into a different category.<\/p>\n Najafi said security forces beat protesters, trying to suppress them. \u201cYes, the security forces are beating people up,\u201d she said, then added, \u201cunfortunately, they\u2019re also shooting at people.\u201d<\/p>\n She described an incident she presented as emblematic of escalation. \u201cSomething sad happened yesterday in the city of Hom, that they actually blew up a man, a very loved and respected man, a local man, with a grenade, and he went into pieces.\u201d According to her account, a government official carried out the act.<\/p>\n Despite the risk, she said she still went to the protests herself. She located herself only as \u201cin the vicinity of Tehran,\u201d avoiding specifics for safety, and described seeing water cannons and other measures aimed not merely at dispersal but at prevention. Security forces tried, she said, to stop people from gathering at all, using \u201canything and everything,\u201d including water cannons and \u201cthe BB guns that we have seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n Another protester, referred to only as Guard e Javidan 74 (SOS-968), described the same pivot others stressed. In his account, the protests started with \u201cthe prices,\u201d \u201cthe economy,\u201d and \u201cinflation,\u201d but \u201cvery soon\u201d the chants changed into \u201cwhat people really want,\u201d described as \u201cfreedom and calling the name of their leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n We have taken our life in our hands as our weapon, and we\u2019re in the streets<\/p>\n For Najafi, that shift demanded something stark from the people participating. \u201cWe have no choice but to succeed,\u201d she said. She framed the street as a place where survival itself became leverage: \u201cWe have taken our life in our hands as our weapon, and we\u2019re in the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n She also described chants that, in her view, revealed where the movement aimed to go. In Mashhad and other cities that she referenced, she said people were chanting \u201cthe name of who they want, which is Reza Pahlavi.\u201d<\/p>\n Reza Pahlavi, the crown prince of Iran. (Courtesy)<\/p>\n In her telling, fear no longer controlled the streets. \u201cThey have no fear,\u201d she said. Then she offered a sweeping statement of unity: \u201cIt seems like the whole country is coming all together and united towards this finality that they have been all looking for.\u201d Foroutan fought to hold back tears as he translated this for Najafi, clearly becoming emotional at her description.<\/p>\n It seems like the whole country is coming all together and united towards this finality that they have been all looking for<\/p>\n Global attention, she suggested, felt like a morale boost that also offered a thin kind of protection. She claimed that at the beginning of the events, Iran was trending number 22 on Twitter\/X, and after the world began paying attention, \u201cnow Iran is top five trending on Twitter.\u201d She interpreted the rise as evidence that \u201cthe world is looking at Iran,\u201d and said that knowledge gave hope\u2014proof that people outside were listening.<\/p>\n In that context, she spoke approvingly of President Donald Trump\u2019s message. She said she supported President Trump, thanked him, and called it \u201cfantastic\u201d that his message gave her and others \u201cthe feeling that somebody outside, somebody powerful, is hearing their voice.\u201d She added that he \u201chas eliminated all the middlemen and is directly talking to people that he should be talking to,\u201d and she described the message from \u201cyesterday\u201d as \u201cvery good.\u201d<\/p>\n Hesam\u2019s reaction treated that message as an accelerant. Since \u201cyesterday and Trump\u2019s note,\u201d he said, more small and local cities rose up. He described people feeling that someone could speak \u201cstraight directly to Khamenei\u201d and tell him what he could or could not do against Iranians. Hesam called the reaction \u201cextremely positive.\u201d<\/p>\n Venezuela surfaced as a warning sign. Hesam described events there as \u201ca lesson for Khamenei,\u201d adding that \u201cwhat\u2019s happening in Venezuela could repeat itself very soon inside Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n Again, Foroutan described the internet shutdown pattern as predictable: The government, he said, first weakens the internet and then cuts it off; during those cutoffs, he argued, the regime commits the worst brutality.<\/p>\n The instability in the conversation itself echoed that claim. Foroutan said Najafi\u2019s audio sounded poor at first because of the VPN quality and then improved. Guard e Javidan 74\u2014speaking from a central province\u2014remained difficult to understand because of cutoffs and dropped out again entirely \u201cbecause of the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet Hesam\u2019s network planned for exactly that. They trained people to take short videos and quick reports, then pass them outward through designated individuals equipped with VPNs and prepared devices. Each small group had a person responsible for uploading. Once a clip hit Instagram, Telegram, or similar channels, Foroutan said, information spread rapidly because \u201ceverybody around the world has access.\u201d<\/p>\n The system aimed to solve a single problem: the regime\u2019s effort to isolate each city and neighborhood from the next.<\/p>\n Najafi said the regime escalated arrests quickly. She described \u201ca lot of people\u201d taken, including \u201ca lot of younger people,\u201d even \u201ca lot of people under 18 years old.\u201d She mentioned a 14-year-old who had been killed, though the name does not appear in the transcript.<\/p>\n She also described violence outside Tehran\u2014violence unfolding in smaller provinces where international attention might not naturally land. \u201cAs we speak right now, in the province of Elam, there is hell going on,\u201d she said. She described forces shooting at people there and estimated \u201cat least,\u201d as she recalled, \u201c10 injured, if not killed,\u201d adding that activists had names.<\/p>\n The message behind her warning felt tactical: Visibility needed to extend beyond Tehran to the provinces as well.<\/p>\n In basic numbers, Najafi described an economy in free fall. She said she had never seen conditions this severe. A loaf of bread, she said\u2014enough to feed \u201cone, two, three people\u201d\u2014now costs \u201c500,000 riyals, which is 50,000 tomans,\u201d and she estimated that \u201cin dollars, 500,000 tomans, it\u2019s about 50 cents for one loaf of bread.\u201d<\/p>\n Then she described the gap between wages and survival. She said the poverty threshold sat around \u201c90 million,\u201d while the average worker earned \u201c12 million\u201d per month. She described a missing \u201cabout 70 or so million,\u201d and said a small family needed \u201c90 million\u201d just \u201cto be able to live.\u201d<\/p>\n In dollars, she estimated the poverty line at \u201c$650 a month,\u201d while workers earned \u201cmuch less than $100.\u201d In her telling, that disparity made desperation structural, not temporary.<\/p>\n Asked what drove the drought and deterioration, Najafi pointed to isolation\u2014being \u201ccut off from the rest of the world,\u201d in trade and in outside scrutiny of life inside Iran. Foroutan added his own view, citing \u201cthe incompetency of the regime over the last few decades.\u201d<\/p>\n On sanctions, she took a firm stance: \u201cAbsolutely, the sanctions have worked.\u201d She argued sanctions\u2014especially on oil\u2014reduced the regime\u2019s resources, leaving it with less money \u201cto suppress people and beat them up.\u201d She also described a willingness to endure the consequences, saying she and others accepted sanctions because they believed the pressure ultimately weakened the regime and supported Iran\u2019s path toward both economic improvement and \u201chuman rights and freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n Najafi placed herself inside the story, not as a distant observer but as a participant with a profession. She said she is a university professor and described students asking whether they should protest and whether she would join them. She said she answered, \u201cYes, I\u2019ll go with you.\u201d<\/p>\n Across \u201call layers of the society,\u201d she said, people kept joining, and she offered an image that conveyed both frailty and defiance: \u201cthis old lady with a walker chanting\u201d in the streets. Men and women, she said, kept joining daily.<\/p>\n She described how the danger escalated. In her account, the regime moved from BB guns and water cannons to live fire. \u201cNow they\u2019re actually shooting at people,\u201d she said. Protesters try to protect themselves, she said, but \u201cyou never know,\u201d because regime forces attack unpredictably.<\/p>\n Najafi returned to the sentence that captured the protest\u2019s logic as she saw it: \u201call we have is our life in their hands, is our weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n She also described the external promises that, in her telling, emboldened people to keep walking back into danger. She said people were \u201creally counting on Bibi Netanyahu\u2019s promise to protect the people of Iran if they get out.\u201d She said they were also counting on President Trump, especially after \u201chis message yesterday,\u201d because \u201cpeople cannot take it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n Then she gave the clearest personal reason she had. She said she was married and saw it as her duty to try to free Iran so her family could live a better life than hers.<\/p>\n She ended with gratitude and an affirmation of identity: \u201clong live Iran,\u201d and \u201cJavid Shah.\u201d<\/p>\n Foroutan described Iran\u2019s leadership statements toward President Trump as threats he considered hollow. He argued the regime understood what the US and Israel could do if they chose, and he again connected Iran\u2019s moment to Venezuela as a warning sign.<\/p>\n From a smaller western city, he said he had just listened to a voice describing chants spreading there as well\u2014\u201cJavid Shah,\u201d \u201clong live Shah,\u201d and \u201cdeath of dictator.\u201d He said internal media showed none of it, so only those with access to international news or online platforms could see the scope, while others learned through whisper networks\u2014quiet conversations that carried news faster than state television.<\/p>\n From what he said he was hearing, he framed two urgent requests directed chiefly at Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump.<\/p>\n First, he said protesters needed an unequivocal guarantee that Iran would remain whole. The regime, he argued, repeatedly tells Iranians that if it falls, \u201cIran is going to be divided\u201d and the country will lose its territorial integrity. Foroutan said The New Iran prepared a letter to President Trump\u2014going out \u201ctoday\u201d\u2014asking him, and urging Netanyahu as well, to state clearly that outside powers will protect Iran\u2019s territorial integrity during regime change and will not allow hostile forces like \u201cISIS or Taliban or whatever\u201d to enter. He argued that assurance would strip away a central fear tactic and accelerate the uprising.<\/p>\n Second, he said protesters needed security and logistical help and, above all, free internet\u2014so Iranians could document brutality in real time and coordinate across cities even during state interference.<\/p>\n Foroutan described President Trump as someone who takes \u201ccalculated risks,\u201d and argued that the US president does not want to appear to the world as directly imposing regime change. He said many Iranians would have liked President Trump to go further sooner, but he believed the president waits until he feels sure\u2014and until the world\u2019s optics make the next move defensible.<\/p>\n He called Venezuela \u201can appetizer\u201d for Iran and suggested Iran\u2019s leadership understood it could face a similar trajectory. He also made an additional claim: \u201cWe know that Israelis and Mossad and Israeli agents are inside Iran,\u201d he said, arguing people see signs of that \u201call the time.\u201d He said President Trump now knew what was happening inside Iran, praised the American president\u2019s message, and suggested stronger steps could come.<\/p>\n Foroutan then described a broader sequence he believed was unfolding: Venezuela nearing conclusion; President Trump wanting to finish the Russia-Ukraine war through a peace plan; and Iran becoming part of a negotiation formula in which Russia might withdraw support for the Islamic Republic. He speculated that \u201cPutin probably will say, give me this so I will not support the Islamic Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n He described Iran as increasingly isolated, listing what he claimed had already fallen away: \u201cHezbollah is gone. Hamas is gone. Venezuela is gone. Syria is gone.\u201d In that framing, Khamenei had \u201cnobody,\u201d and bluffing no longer worked because \u201cnobody believes him.\u201d He ended with a vivid prediction: \u201csooner or later, one night we\u2019ll wake up, and we\u2019ll see Khamenei has, I don\u2019t know, left,\u201d and he speculated about destinations such as China, Russia, or Cuba.<\/p>\n Turning to the region, Foroutan described Arab states as cautious actors weighing risk and opportunity. He said Arab countries supported President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu\u2019s actions \u201cwith regard to Gaza,\u201d but suggested they might not welcome the rise of a powerful Iran, given Iran\u2019s size and potential to become a regional military and economic power. At the same time, he acknowledged the Islamic Republic had attacked and destabilized Arab states, including strikes on Saudi targets like Aramco.<\/p>\n He predicted that Arab leaders would wait to see what President Trump decided and suggested the president might issue an ultimatum at the decisive moment. Foroutan doubted the US would carry out a direct invasion, arguing instead that change would occur inside Iran and through Israeli capabilities.<\/p>\n On Europe, Hesam\u2019s view\u2014relayed through Foroutan\u2014was that people inside Iran no longer count on Europeans. He said Europeans had taken advantage of Iran\u2019s resources for a long time, and therefore, Iranians did not expect them to support the uprising now. In the speakers\u2019 framing, expectations centered on the United States, Israel, and the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n Hesam described SOS Iran as a tool that lets activists find one another \u201canonymously and safely.\u201d Through the network, he said, he identified and worked with about 50 leaders\u2014\u201cring leaders or team leaders\u201d\u2014around the country \u201cwithout them knowing one another.\u201d<\/p>\n Foroutan added long-range preparation and logistics. He said organizers printed thousands of lion and sun flags inside Iran and created \u201ctens of thousands\u201d of posters of Reza Pahlavi, starting a year and a half earlier, because they believed this day would come. He said the network shipped these materials through postal mail to different cities and had videos showing people picking them up. Foroutan said he saw footage \u201cjust this morning inside Iran\u201d showing people carrying flags.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Screenshot-2026-01-04-at-23.24.58.jpg\")
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