Foreign News
Huge anti-government protests in Tehran and other Iranian cities, videos show
Huge crowds of protesters have been marching through Iran’s capital and other cities, videos show, in what is said to be the largest show of force by opponents of the clerical establishment in years.
The peaceful demonstrations in Tehran and the second city of Mashhad on Thursday evening, which were not dispersed by security forces, can be seen in footage verified by BBC Persian.
Later, a monitoring group reported a nationwide internet blackout.
Protesters can be heard in the footage calling for the overthrow of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the return of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late former shah, who had urged his supporters to take to the streets.
It was the 12th consecutive day of unrest that has been sparked by anger over the collapse of the Iranian currency and has spread to more than 100 cities and towns across all 31 of Iran’s provinces, according to human rights groups.
The US-based Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) has said at least 34 protesters – five of them children – and eight security personnel have been killed, and that 2,270 other protesters have been arrested.
Norway-based monitor Iran Human Rights (IHR) has said at least 45 protesters, including eight children, have been killed by security forces.
BBC Persian has confirmed the deaths and identities of 22 people, while Iranian authorities have reported the deaths of six security personnel.
On Thursday evening, videos on social media and verified by BBC Persian showed a large crowd of protesters moving along a major road in Mashhad, in the country’s north-east.
Chants of “Long live the shah” and “This is the final battle! Pahlavi will return” can be heard. And at one point, several men are seen climbing on an overpass and removing what appears to be surveillance cameras attached to it.
Another video posted online showed a large crowd of protesters walking along a major road in eastern Tehran.
In footage sent to BBC Persian from the north of the capital, another large crowd is heard chanting “This is the final battle! Pahlavi will return”. Elsewhere in the north, protesters were filmed shouting “Dishonourable” and “Don’t be afraid, we are all together” following a clash with security forces.
Other videos showed protestors chanting “Death to the dictator” – a reference to Khamenei – in the central city of Isfahan; “Long live the Shah” in the northern city of Babol, and “Don’t be afraid, we are all together” in the north-western city of Tabriz.
In the western city of Dezful, footage sent to BBC Persian showed a large crowd of protesters and also security personnel appearing to open fire from a central square.
The evening protests came not long after Reza Pahlavi, whose father was overthrown by the 1979 Islamic revolution and lives in Washington DC, had called on Iranians to “take to the streets and, as a united front, shout your demands”.
In a post on X, Pahlavi said “millions of Iranians demanded their freedom tonight”, describing the protesters as his “courageous compatriots”.
He thanked US President Donald Trump for holding the “regime to account”, and called on European leaders to do the same.
Pahlavi has also called for protests to continue from 20:00 local time (16:30 GMT) on Friday night.
Iranian state media downplayed the scale of Thursday’s unrest. In some cases, they denied protests had taken place altogether, posting videos of empty streets.
Meanwhile, internet watchdog NetBlocks said its metrics showed that Iran was “in the midst of a nationwide internet blackout”.
“The incident follows a series of escalating digital censorship measures targeting protests across the country and hinders the public’s right to communicate at a critical moment,” it warned, referring to previous losses of connectivity in several cities.
Earlier in the day, footage from Lomar a small town in the western province of Ilam showed a crowd chanting “Cannons, tanks, fireworks, mullahs must go” – a reference to the clerical establishment. Another showed people throwing papers into the air outside a bank that appeared to have been broken into.
Other videos showed many shuttered shops in a number of predominantly Kurdish cities and towns in Ilam, as well as Kermanshah and Lorestan provinces.
It followed a call for a general strike by exiled Kurdish opposition groups in response to the deadly crackdown on protests in the region.
At least 17 protesters have been killed by security forces in Ilam, Kermanshah and Lorestan during the unrest, and many of them have been members of the Kurdish or Lor ethnic minorities, according to Kurdish human rights group Hengaw.
On Wednesday, there were violent clashes between protesters and security forces in several cities and towns in western Iran, as well as other regions.
IHR said it had been the deadliest day of the unrest, with 13 protesters confirmed to have been killed across the country.
“The evidence shows that the scope of crackdown is becoming more violent and more extensive every day,” said the group’s director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.
Hengaw said two protesters were shot dead by security forces in Khoshk-e Bijar, in the northern province of Gilan, on Wednesday night.
Iran’s semi-official news agency Fars, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards, reported that three police officers were also killed on Wednesday.
It said two were shot dead by armed individuals among a group of “rioters” in the south-western town of Lordegan, and the third was stabbed to death “during efforts to control unrest” in Malard country, west of Tehran.
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump reiterated his threat to intervene militarily if Iranian authorities killed protesters.
“I have let them know that if they start killing people, which they tend to do during their riots – they have lots of riots – if they do it, we are going to hit them very hard,” he said in an interview with the Hugh Hewitt Show.
Separately, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said the Iranian economy was “on the ropes”.
While speaking at the Economic Club of Minnesota on Thursday, he added: “President Trump does not want them to harm more of the protesters. This is a tense moment.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian earlier called on security forces to exercise “utmost restraint” when handling peaceful protests. “Any violent or coercive behaviour should be avoided,” a statement said.
Khamenei – who has ultimate power in Iran – said on Saturday that authorities should “speak with the protesters” but that “rioters should be put in their place”.
The protests began on 28 December, when shopkeepers took to the streets of Tehran to express their anger at another sharp fall in the value of the Iranian currency, the rial, against the US dollar on the open market.
The rial has sunk to a record low over the past year and inflation has soared to 40% as sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme squeeze an economy also weakened by government mismanagement and corruption.
University students soon joined the protests and they began spreading to other cities, with crowds frequently heard chanting slogans critical of the clerical establishment.
In messages sent to the BBC, via a UK-based activist, a woman in Tehran said despair was driving the protests. “We’re living in limbo,” she said. “I feel like I’m hanging in the air with neither wings to migrate nor hope to pursue my goals here. Life here has become unbearable.”
Another said she was protesting because her dreams had been “stolen” by the clerical establishment and she wanted it to know that “we still have a voice to shout, a fist to punch them in the face.”
A woman in the western city of Ilam said she knew of young people from families affiliated with the establishment who were taking part in protests. “My friend and her three sisters, whose father is a well-known figure in the intelligence services, are joining without their father knowing,” she said.
The protests have been the most widespread since an uprising in 2022 sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman who was detained by morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly. More than 550 people were killed and 20,000 detained by security forces over several months, according to human rights groups.
The biggest protests since the Islamic revolution took place in 2009, when millions of Iranians took to the streets of major cities after a disputed presidential election. Dozens of opposition supporters killed and thousands were detained in the ensuing crackdown.
[BBC]
A massive ‘megatsunami’ wave created when part of an Alaskan mountain crumbled into the sea is the second tallest ever recorded – and a reminder of the risks posed by melting glaciers, say scientists.
Last summer a giant wave swept through a remote fjord in southeast Alaska leaving destruction in its wake.
The event went largely unreported at the time, but a new scientific analysis shows it was caused by a massive landslide.
An incredible 64 million cubic metres of rock – the equivalent of 24 Great Pyramids – splashed into the water below. The sheer power of that amount of rock plunging into the fjord in under a minute created a gigantic wave almost 500 metres tall.
Only the time it happened – in the early hours of the morning – prevented tourist cruise ships being caught up in the devastation, say the researchers.
Dr Bretwood Higman, an Alaskan geologist, who saw for himself the damage at Tracy Arm Fjord, said it was “a close call”.
“We know that there were people that were very nearly in the wrong place,” he said. ‘I’m quite terrified that we’re not going to be so lucky in the future.”
These huge waves, labelled megatsunamis, happen when a landslide caused by either an earthquake or loose rock hit water below. They are usually localised and dissipate quickly.
The other type of tsunamis happen in the open ocean and are directly triggered by earthquakes, or occasionally other powerful events such as underwater volcanoes.
They, like the 2011 Japan tsunami, can travel for thousands of miles, hitting populated areas and causing widespread devastation and loss of life.
The biggest megatsunami was in the 1950s and was over 500 metres. This latest megatsunami was the second largest.
Dr Higman arrived on the scene a few weeks after the tsunami hit at the Tracy Arm Fjord – a destination popular with cruise ships exploring the natural wonders of Alaska.
He found broken trees littering the mountainside and hurled into the water, and vast swathes of scarred rock stripped of soil and vegetation.
Alaska is especially vulnerable to megatsunamis because of its steep mountains, narrow fjords and frequent earthquakes.
Now new research published in Science suggests glacier melt driven by climate change is making such collapses far worse.
The team combined field work, seismic and satellite data to reconstruct a domino chain of events and trace the height of the wave.
Dr Stephen Hicks of University College London said the glacier was previously “helping to hold up this piece of rock”, and so when the ice retreated, it exposed the bottom of the cliff face, “allowing that rock material to suddenly collapse into the fjord”.
He and his colleagues have studied tsunamis for decades and are worried.
“More people are now going to remote areas – often these tourist cruises are going to see the natural beauty of the area to actually learn more about climate change – but they are also dangerous places to be.”
Dr Higman said there is little doubt that the risks of megatsunamis are increasing.
“At this point, I’m pretty confident that these are increasing not just a little bit, but increasing a lot,” he said.
“Maybe in the order of 10 times as frequent as they were just a few decades ago.”
The scientists are calling for wider monitoring of hazards in parts of Alaska that might be vulnerable to megatsunamis.
Some cruise companies have announced they are to stop sending ships into Tracy Arm amid safety fears.
[BBC]
Vivek Ramaswamy won the Republican nomination for Ohio governor on Tuesday, putting the staunch ally of Donald Trump on a path to running the Rust Belt state.
In unofficial results, he defeated Casey Putsch, a car designer with an automotive-themed YouTube channel, for a place in the general election, according to US media reports.
Ramaswamy, a health-technology entrepreneur, gained national recognition during his unsuccessful run against Trump for president in 2024. He later threw his support behind Trump.
In the Ohio primary, even as he ran against Republicans, he focused on Democratic nominee Amy Acton, the former Ohio public health director who guided the state’s response to the Covid pandemic and ran unopposed.
During a victory speech, Ramaswamy thanked Ohio voters “for getting us to this point”, adding, “The real destination is in November.”
Acton, who will face Ramaswamy in the general election, said during her own victory speech that she is running for governor to make Ohio more affordable again.
“It shouldn’t be this hard,” she said. “It is time to put working families first.”
Ohio’s current governor, Republican Mike DeWine, cannot run for re-election because of term limits.
Trump boosted Ramaswamy in a social media post on Tuesday: “I know Vivek well, competed against him, and he is something SPECIAL. He is Young, Strong, and Smart!”
Vice President JD Vance, who previously represented Ohio in the US Senate, travelled to Cincinnati on Tuesday to cast his ballot for Ramaswamy and others.
The state has shifted towards Republicans in recent years, and Ramaswamy benefitted from name recognition and shuffling in the top ranks of the state’s Republican Party caused by the ascension of Vance to the vice presidency.
Ramaswamy burst onto the national political scene in 2023 as a neophyte with a knack for using social media and podcast appearances to bolster his image. His mile-a-minute cadence and brash attacks resulted in viral moments during the 2024 Republican presidential debates, but he dropped out early due to lackluster support from voters.
Ramaswamy went on to serve as a top Trump surrogate during the 2024 presidential race and was involved in the effort to start Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, before ceding control of the project to Elon Musk.
When he announced his run for Ohio governor, Ramaswamy cleared the Republican primary field of most competitors. He has drawn on his personal fortune to help fund his campaign; The Columbus Dispatch reported he loaned his operation $25m (£18.4m).
His victory sets up a general election campaign focused on the lingering fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Acton had a highly visible role as the state’s public health director during the height of the crisis. Under DeWine’s leadership, Ohio took a more moderate approach to the pandemic response than other Republican-controlled states. Still, Ohio suspended in-person dining and postponed its presidential primary in 2020 as the virus spread.
But ongoing political backlash to Covid-19 restrictions, including masking and school closures, has opened up a path for Republicans to attack Acton six years later.
Ramaswamy recently released an ad claiming that Acton “called off Ohio’s election at the last minute, defying a judge’s order and abusing her power.”
DeWine – who has endorsed Ramaswamy – took the unusual step of defending Acton from the ad’s claims.
“I told her to issue the health order,” DeWine told NBC4 news station. “The decision was mine.”
The race promises to get more intense and expensive heading into the general election in November.
Meanwhile, seven Republican senators in Indiana who voted against Trump’s redistricting plan faced challengers in Tuesday’s primary election.
Five of the Trump-backed challengers have beat the incumbents, while one has lost. Results for the seventh race have not yet been determined.
The Indiana Republicans defied intense pressure from Trump last December by rejecting his demands to pass a voting map meant to favour their party in midterm elections, scheduled for November.
In one of the most conservative states in the US, 21 Republicans in the Senate joined all 10 Democrats to torpedo the redistricting plan last year.
Trump warned at the time that Republicans who did not support the initiative could risk losing their seats.
[BBC]
Spanish police have seized what is thought to be a national record haul of cocaine from a ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
Between 30,000 to 45,000kg were found when the Civil Guard intercepted a freighter in international waters, the body’s main union, the AUGC, announced. It called the move a “historic blow to drug trafficking”.
The vessel was intercepted off Spain’s Canary Islands on Friday and around 20 people were arrested, the AUGC told the AFP news agency. It had travelled from Sierra Leona and was on its way to Libya.
The Civil Guard has declined to give details of the investigation for legal reasons.
Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told reporters in Madrid that the seizure was “one of the biggest, not only nationally but internationally”.
The Civil Guard shared a photograph on X showing the drugs stuffed into the hold of the intercepted vessel.
“Today history is being written in the Maritime Service of the Civil Guard,” it wrote.
“Intercepted in international waters the largest known seizure: between 30,000 and 45,000 kg of cocaine on board a freighter.”
While the boat was headed to Libya, AFP reported that the pattern of previous operations suggests that it was due to offload the drugs onto smaller vessels for distribution in Europe.
In January, Spanish authorities made its biggest seizure of cocaine at sea from a ship that was carrying almost 10 tonnes.
[BBC]
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