Read the daily news to learn English

Protests in Greenland and Denmark as Trump repeats tariffs threat – Europe live

If you’re just joining us, here’s a round-up of the day’s main developments: Thousands gathered all around Denmark and in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, as part of a planned “Hands Off Greenland” action protesting Donald Trump and his threats to take over the island. “We are demonstrating against American statements and ambitions to annex Greenland. We demand respect for the Danish Realm and for Greenland’s right to self-determination,” Camilla Siezing, chair of the Joint Association Inuit, said in a statement. These protests took place after Donald Trump on Friday threatened to impose tariffs on countries that do not “go along” with his plan to annex Greenland. He later doubled down on those statements by posting on Truth Social an image of himself accompanied with the caption “Mister Tariff” and “The Tariff King”. Meanwhile, a bipartisan congressional delegation continued to meet with Danish and Greenlandic leaders in Copenhagen, where they maintained their support of both Greenland and Denmark in direct contrast with statements coming from the White House. With Nato allies troops in Greenland this week, some Greenland residents are now preparing for the worst, either stocking up on supplies or readying themselves to flee quickly.

Ali Khamenei says thousands killed in Iran protests, some in ‘inhuman, savage manner’

The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has acknowledged for the first time that thousands of people were killed during the protests that rocked Iran over the last two weeks. In a speech on Thursday, Khamenei said that thousands of people had been killed, “some in an inhuman, savage manner”, and blamed the US for the death toll. The supreme leader railed against Trump, whom he called a “criminal” for his support of demonstrations, and called for strict punishment of protesters. Khamenei said: “By God’s grace, the Iranian nation must break the back of the seditionists just as it broke the back of the sedition.” Iranian authorities also released a compilation of footage on Saturday that purported to show armed individuals carrying guns and knives alongside regular protesters – evidence, they said, of foreign saboteurs. Another senior Iranian cleric demanded the execution of protesters, demanding that “armed hypocrites should be put to death”. He described protesters as “butlers” and “soldiers” of Israel and the US, vowing that neither country should “expect peace”. Khatami, a member of the Guardian Council and a senior member of the Assembly of Experts, which appoints the supreme leader, is a hardline, influential cleric in Iran. The speech was in striking contrast to statements from the US president, Donald Trump, this week, who appeared to postpone a military strike in Iran, telling reporters that Iranian authorities had agreed to halt the executions of protesters. On Friday night, Trump thanked Iran for stopping the execution of what he said was 800 protesters, though it was unclear where he was drawing those figures from. Rights groups have said the repression of protesters is continuing, with more than 3,090 people killed in the unrest and nearly 4,000 more cases still waiting to be reviewed, according to the Human Rights Activists news agency. More than 22,100 people have been arrested in protests, leading to fears of mistreatment of detainees. The two-and-a-half weeks of protests started on 28 December when traders took to the streets in Tehran in response to a sudden dip in the value of the rial. Protests spread and demands expanded to include calls for an end to the country’s government, creating the most serious, and deadliest unrest the country has seen since the 1979 revolution. The brutal quashing of demonstrations by authorities, which Human Rights Watch said on Friday included the “mass killings of protesters”, has largely driven people off the streets. With the immediate unrest addressed, authorities were making a public show of punishing those involved in the action, which they had styled as a foreign-backed plot to destabilise the country. Khatami, in his Friday sermon, claimed 350 mosques, 126 prayer halls and 20 other places of worship had been damaged by protesters. He also said 400 hospitals, 106 ambulances, 71 fire trucks and 50 other emergency vehicles had been damaged. It was unclear what the fallout of the protest movement will be, or if it will reignite in the coming days. Iran continues to be cut off from the rest of the world, as authorities maintain the more than week-long internet shutdown. Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late shah of Iran who had become a prominent opposition voice during the protests, continued to call for the overthrow of the government on Friday and urged Trump to intervene. “I believe the president is a man of his word,” Pahlavi said, adding that “regardless of whether action is taken or not, we as Iranians have no choice to carry on the fight”.

‘It will take a generation’: Iranians abroad on the protests – and change

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s former shah, has called on the west to help unseat Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. Speaking on Friday at a news conference in Washington, Pahlavi said: “The Iranian people are taking decisive action on the ground. It is now time for the international community to join them fully.” With the protests in Iran appearing to slow down, Donald Trump seems to have temporarily pulled back from threats to strike the country. In recent days, he had repeatedly spoken about how the US was “locked and loaded” if Iran started to shoot at the protesters. Estimates of the number of people killed during the unrest vary from less than 2,000 to more than 12,000. However, earlier this week, the US president said he had been told “on good authority” the “killing in Iran is stopping – it’s stopped,” adding that “there’s no plans for executions”. We asked Iranians living abroad who have family in Iran to tell us their views on the current crisis. Some welcomed foreign intervention and some wanted regime change without it. Others believed change would take “a generation”. ‘The people need to take back Iran by ourselves and for ourselves’ Like many Iranians living abroad, Roya had been desperately waiting for days to hear from her family. Their usual communication via Telegram and WhatsApp was not working after the internet blackout. “People had sent messages to family and friends but heard nothing back – we are a nation waiting for the double tick,” she says, referring to the message delivery confirmation on WhatsApp. “It was exhausting not knowing if they were OK. Some of my friends have spoken to their families – it seems that they can call from Iran, but we can’t call into Iran. To her relief, her mother was able to phone her on Tuesday to speak, but only “for a few seconds” as it is so expensive to call. “My heart was in my mouth when she called, I thought I was going to throw up,” says Roya, 27, who has lived in Switzerland since 2017 and works in marketing. “She sounded like she hadn’t slept in days. She sounded exhausted and sad. I was just able to check that they were OK and my brother was OK. “It was such a relief, I could hear the dog barking in the background, but it also made me hungry for more time to speak to my family.” Roya said she had been in touch with some of her friends who left Iran on Monday night to travel to Turkey. “They called us from Turkey and said the number of dead is way higher than the news is making it out to be,” she says. “However, they said that the people are hopeful, they’re strong, they’re angry.” She is concerned about what the future holds for Iran. “I worry about what comes after because I know the voices of the monarchists are really, really loud,” she says. “They want the ‘prince’ [Reza Pahlavi] to return, but it is not a view that I, or a lot of people, share. Many people say we do not want a recycled monarchy. What is this guy going to do? He has barely lived in Iran. What does he understand about the people and how the country is run? “The people calling for intervention by foreign powers are also loud, but that doesn’t mean that is what most people want. If anybody has opened a history book, they will see that foreign intervention in Iran has never gone well. “My view is that the people need to take back Iran by ourselves and for ourselves; we can’t count on foreign intervention. I am sick and tired of all these politicians sitting in their very comfortable spots in their private jets and giving opinions on what other countries should be doing. “I am hopeful that the government is going to fall, I just don’t know when. The lucky thing for the monarchists is that they have a figure whose name they can yell. The problem with the opposition is we don’t really have any one figure to rally behind. “Who is going to come into power, and what is going to happen if there is going to be a war? These things are at the forefront of our minds because, in addition to being worried about the physical safety of our family and our friends, there is also the question of: what’s going to come after? Roya* 27, Switzerland ‘The change needed will probably take a generation’ Reza, a teacher in the UK whose parents are in Iran, is not hopeful that any regime change will have much effect in the immediate term. “My wife had a very brief conversation with her family to check that they are OK,” he says. “Generally and understandably, people are a bit afraid to go out. My family are not in the capital, and the protests in our city have certainly died down. “The general, ordinary person, and that would be our family, just won’t go out. They don’t want to be caught in some sort of crossfire. I am not worried about my parents; the only worry would be if they needed the hospital, as the staffing has been much reduced, so services are stretched.” Reza, who was born in the UK to Iranian parents, would normally visit Iran two or three times a year. His last visit was in June. He is not optimistic about a solution to the current crisis. “It is a cultural problem, not a political one,” he says. “We must rid Iran of corruption. Too many countries are sticking their noses in where they’re not welcome, which won’t bring the change that we need. Throughout history, only Iranians have changed Iran, no one else. “As for the idea of Trump intervening: Iran is not Venezuela – it is a huge country, with vastly diverse ethnic backgrounds, political views and religious views – it is way too diverse to do that. Trump has this idea that he can point the finger and intervene, but it just won’t work. It is not logistically possible. “It’s a change that will probably take a generation, and I don’t see any one person who can do that.” Reza*, UK ‘We want President Trump to help us urgently’ Rose, who is from Iran but has been living abroad for 10 years and is a student living in the UK, wants intervention from the US. “The situation has been emotionally devastating and deeply distressing,” she says. “Due to widespread internet and communication blackouts, I have lost contact with family and friends inside Iran. Not knowing whether loved ones are safe, detained, injured, or alive creates constant fear and anxiety. “The world also will never know the exact number of innocent people getting killed right now. People in Iran are being killed for protesting and demanding basic human rights. Watching this unfold while feeling helpless from abroad has had a profound emotional and psychological impact on all of us.” “What people want most is strong international pressure, protection of civilians, and a regime change, we want President Trump to help us urgently,” she says. “My greatest concern is for the safety of civilians who are being targeted for peacefully protesting. I am also deeply concerned about mass arrests, possible executions, lack of medical access, and the complete isolation of people due to communication blackouts. There is a real fear that crimes against civilians are happening without witnesses, accountability, or a global response.” Rose*, 26, UK ‘I am constantly checking the news, mourning those who have lost their lives’ Arta, 38, who lives in Europe, visited Iran in December 2025 to see her parents for a holiday and left a few days before the demonstrations began to spread. “I had not seen my parents for a year,” she says. “During my stay, I visited my home town in western Iran and spent most of my time in Tehran. I witnessed a protest and a strike in the Tehran grand bazaar; the gold bazaar was completely closed, which was something entirely new to me. “The economic situation is unimaginable; prices were tripled or even four times higher,” she says. “My parents can only afford a basic life. After we returned, I was talking to a friend in Iran when I noticed she did not have internet any more, and this was still the case days later. I received a text from a distant friend that my parents are fine, and my mother made a brief call on Tuesday. “I am constantly checking the news, mourning those who lost their lives, and wishing to hear my mom’s voice once again. “I really hope for an internal change, although it seems almost impossible.” Arta*, 38, Europe ‘The world needs to intervene’ Mani, 27, a student living in Scotland, says he cannot sleep for worrying about his family, who are among the protesters. “We do not want this regime,” he says. “My wife is also having panic attacks, and our normal life has completely stopped. Yesterday I got a phone call from my brother, and I heard his voice for less than 10 seconds.” Mani wants swift intervention. “We are happy for President Trump to intervene,” he says. “This is the only chance for us to get rid of this hateful government. The world needs to intervene because if the Iranian regime knows that the world just talks and does nothing, they will kill more. I am concerned that my people are dying for nothing. “Reza Pahlavi is the best alternative that we have, and I believe in him. He is the opposition to this regime. He has some plans for Iran.” Mani*, 27, Scotland ‘The current situation in Iran is heartbreaking’ Hana, 40, who left Tehran 14 years ago to study in Germany and has remained there ever since, believes any foreign intervention in the current situation would be a “disaster” for both Iran and the region. “I don’t believe that President Trump has any good intentions,” says Hana, who works in IT. “Any US involvement could lead to civil war and the disintegration of Iran, causing lots of issues for the region. I do believe Trump’s involvement would be bad for both the future of democracy and the stability of Iran and the region.” Hana says she had been trying to contact her family, who live in northern Tehran, since lastThursday, when she “suddenly lost connection” with them. However, on Tuesday morning, she received a very brief phone call from her mother. “I had been so stressed as I didn’t know if they were safe, then I saw the call from my mother, and I was so relieved to speak to her and know that my family is safe that I burst into tears,” she says. Hana does not believe a regime change in Iran is the answer. “The current situation in Iran is heartbreaking,” she says. “I am strongly against regime change in Iran, not because I support the current structure of the government, but mainly because I don’t see a viable alternative to this regime at the moment. “I understand that people are frustrated and have lost their hope and trust in the system. They are in survival mode and are looking for someone who gives them a reassurance that things will get better. To think that any foreign country can bring hope and stability to Iran is a wrong assumption. Hana*, 40, Germany *Names have been changed

Guterres warns of ‘powerful forces’ undermining ‘global cooperation’

The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, will warn on Saturday of the peril posed by “powerful forces lining up to undermine global cooperation” in an address to mark the 80th anniversary of the UN’s first major meeting. Speaking in London’s Methodist Central Hall – the site where eight decades earlier delegates from 51 countries came together for the inaugural session of the general assembly – the UN head will make an impassioned plea for the virtues of multilateralism and international law to prevail during a period of deepening global uncertainty. In January 1946, the general assembly’s first resolution focused on disarmament and the elimination of atomic weapons as a global goal. Now, Guterres warns of a planet facing myriad threats that were then unthinkable, citing the climate crisis and threat from “cyberspace” at a time many countries are locked into a new arms race, though he will hold off from naming offending states. The secretary general, who will step down at the end of 2026, will say: “Last year, global military spending reached $2.7tn – over 200 times the UK’s current aid budget, or equivalent to over 70% of Britain’s entire economy.” The deepening investment in weaponry runs alongside his concerns that the drivers of climate breakdown are being wilfully ignored and online content is undermining democracy. “As the planet broke heat records, fossil fuel profits continued to surge. And in cyberspace, algorithms rewarded falsehoods, fuelled hatred, and provided authoritarians with powerful tools of control,” he will tell the London audience. Comments from the 76-year-old come at a time of chronic funding difficulties for the UN, largely driven by the decisions of the US president, Donald Trump. The US has announced it would be allocating just $2bn (£1.5bn) to UN humanitarian assistance, a fraction of its previous contributions as the leading funder. The announcement came with a warning from the US state department that the global body must “adapt, shrink or die”, and that demands would be imposed on countries receiving the money. Just over a week later, Trump announced the US withdrawal from multiple UN agencies as well as its key climate treaty. Experts say the funding cut will lead to a shrunken, less effective international aid system, with the UN already saying a funding shortfall threatens to cripple its global peacekeeping operations. Guterres, however, says reforms will ensure the “United Nations is more agile, more coordinated and more responsive”.

Greenland crisis: Europe needs the US, but it also needs to stand up to Trump

The crisis over Greenland may deliver the moment when Europe must stand up to Donald Trump, as officials have said a US attempt to annex the territory could shatter the Nato transatlantic alliance. European leaders have entertained Trump’s demands for nearly a year as he has pushed Nato countries to increase their defence spending to 5% of GDP, and threatened to pull US support from Ukraine as part of a peace process that appears to favour Russia. They have also given a muted response to US adventurism abroad including the capture and rendition of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. The obsequiousness has often played out in public. Various European leaders have vied for the role of “Trump whisperer” and Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, infamously referred to him as “daddy” at a summit last June. But Trump’s’ repeated and increasingly bellicose demands that Denmark cede or sell him semi-autonomous Greenland has sparked one of the greatest crises for transatlantic partnership in its history – and may force Europe to draw a line in the snow. “The president’s ambition is on the table,” the Danish foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen told Fox News after the talks. “Of course we have our red lines. This is 2026, you trade with people but you don’t trade people.” After an hour-long meeting with the US vice-president, JD Vance, and secretary of state, Marco Rubio, Rasmussen and Greenland’s foreign minister, Vivian Motzfeldt, stood grim-faced smoking cigarettes outside of the Eisenhower executive building in Washington DC. “When it comes to Greenland, the Europeans have found a red line that they really want to stand by,” said Kristine Berzina, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund for US defence and transatlantic security. “Everything else has been subject to negotiation … but the Greenland situation is different because it comes to the question of sovereignty, and it comes to the question of whether Europe is capable of standing up for itself in terms of its own territory, its own rights.” Europe, however, was at a “diplomatic disadvantage” because of its dependency on the US for security, said Latvia’s former prime minister Krišjanis Kariņš. “Europe is not, unfortunately, in a strong position to strongly object, because, say, if Europe were to open up the dispute into the trade area, I’m certain that the US would respond in kind or more than in kind,” he said. “At the end of the day, Europe still needs the US.” The strain on officials from Denmark and Greenland has been enormous. A day after meeting US officials, a visibly emotional Motzfeldt said she had been overwhelmed by the last few days of negotiations. “Denmark has really only been a good ally to the US,” said Marisol Maddox, a senior fellow at Dartmouth University’s Arctic studies institute. “So that’s also a part of what makes this so extraordinary, is this was like going up to your best friend and just randomly slapping them in the face ... There’s nothing to provoke this.” Trump’s interest in acquiring the island has only grown since his longtime friend Ronald Lauder, the heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics company, first suggested it to him in 2019. The White House has said its main concern is national security, but Trump has admitted that ego plays a key role as well. He told the New York Times last week that owning Greenland was “what I feel is psychologically needed for success”. On Friday, Trump threatened to impose tariffs on countries that do not “go along” with his ambition to annex Greenland. Others in his administration – particularly Vance – have seen the obsession over Greenland as an opportunity to pick another fight with European allies, and European diplomats saw his decision to join the negotiations as a negative sign. Vance “is especially enjoying this”, one said. “It’s clear why he’s gotten involved and it will make the talks more emotional.” Politico reported that 10 ministers and officials polled on his involvement did not regard him as an ally on Greenland or other transatlantic matters. Europe has responded by seeking to cut the legs out from under the Trump administration’s argument that Greenland is underprotected from a potential Russian or Chinese attack. A small French military contingent arrived on the island on Thursday as part of a limited deployment including troops from Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands and the UK. “The defence and protection of Greenland is a common concern for the entire Nato alliance,” said Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen. Rasmussen and Motzfeldt are scheduled to meet Rutte for talks on Monday. By deploying troops and assets, Kariņš said European leaders could take away a pretext of the Trump administration for annexing the territory, referring to arguments that it was not protected from Russian and Chinese aggression. “President Trump has a pretty established track record now of sort of doing things his own way,” he said. But if Europe strengthens Greenland’s military security, “it takes away a public argument by the Trump administration” for annexation. Aside from military deployments, observers have plenty of ideas about how the EU can protect Danish sovereignty of Greenland and assert European interest. At the milder end, suggestions include convening an international summit on Arctic security in Nuuk, co-organised by Denmark and Greenland, together with the EU and non-EU countries including the UK, Canada, Norway and the US. More radical ideas are also circulating, such as freezing the European parliament’s vote on ratification of the EU-US trade deal agreed with Trump at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland last year. A group of socialist and green MEPs argue that voting on the deal, currently scheduled for February, would be “easily seen as rewarding … his actions”. Such a move, however, is unlikely to gain majority support in the right-leaning parliament, where many MEPs are wary of antagonising the White House. The day after Rasmussen said Trump remained intent on conquering Greenland, EU officials continued to be diplomatic. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, described the US on Thursday as an ally and partner while discussing the Greenland situation. She also set out how the EU was seeking to deepen support for the island, citing the opening of an office in Nuuk and a proposal to double EU financial aid. “Greenland can count on us, politically, economically and financially,” she told reporters. Constantinos Kombos, the foreign minister of Cyprus, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said the bloc needed to intensify dialogue with the US over Greenland. “Maybe [the current administration] is different than what we are used to and it is, but that doesn’t mean we have the luxury of responding with our self-isolation,” he said.

The Iranian state silenced protests with brutality. What now for Iran’s opposition?

The Japanese writer Haruki Murakami in his novel 1Q84 may have foreshadowed the great and indelible rift Iranian society is about to experience. “The ones who did it can always rationalize their actions and even forget what they did. They can turn away from things they don’t want to see. But the surviving victims can never forget. They can’t turn away. Their memories are passed on from parent to child. That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.” Inside Iran, contrasting memories are already being brought into even sharper relief and made more traumatic by the blanket propaganda from Iran state TV portraying protesters as drug-crazed or pawns of a foreign power attracted to a violent terrorist culture reminiscent of Islamic State. But underlying this battle for narrative lies a wider political challenge for the opponents of the Iranian government inside and outside the country. Yet again the Iranian state, faced by a revolt, has resorted to overwhelming repression and state violence to silence. The initial promise by the reformist president, Masoud Pezeshkian, that he would listen to the voices of protest as the grievances were legitimate emerged to be hollow, or quickly superseded. The notion that reformist governments can or want to control the security apparatus, or suppress the prejudices of the supreme leader, have been dispelled. Arash Azizi, the author of What Iranians Want and a supporter of an Iranian Republic, says the scale of this repression is unprecedented. “The impact has been disastrous and numbing. We are still digesting it. We are talking about the most brutal actions by the Islamic Republic since the 1980s. The vast majority of Iranians do not remember anything like this. It’s now emerging that we almost all knew someone who was killed.” The necessity to reflect collectively on such a tragedy inside Iran is made more difficult by a weeklong blackout of communications. It leaves the opposition grieving, in disarray, and still bitterly divided over the wisdom of foreign-backed revolt and how change can be achieved. Some cling to the hope that Donald Trump and Sen Lindsey Graham will still make good on their promise to help the revolution and whatever help comes has only been postponed. Others accuse Trump of betrayal and of offering false hope, urging the protesters on to the streets only for them to be mown down. Trump clings to the threadbare excuse that the regime has promised not to execute the protesters. The inquest will be most intense around the role of Reza Pahlavi, the 65-year-old exiled son of the former shah of Iran. Even anti-monarchists admit chants for the return of the shah have featured strongly, even if they differ on the depth of that support and its meaning. In the words of Mehrdad Khamenei, writing on the news website Akhbar Rooz, “it is a paradox of the opposition that, unable to produce liberation, [it] has taken refuge in the reproduction of the past”. Rouzbeh Parsi, an adjunct lecturer at Sweden’s Lund University, says Pahlavi is for many Iranians born after the shah’s repressive rule little more than a convenient blank page. “The calls for the return of a monarch is a sign of desperation on the part of some protesters, who under the repression of the Islamic Republic have not been able to coalesce around any single political figure inside the country.” One of the striking aspects of Pahlavi is that in interview he is unfailingly polite, cautious to the point of robotic, and seemingly unexceptional in his stated centrist ambitions to help bring about a modern Iran, ideally through a referendum. He has three daughters raised in the west, of which the oldest, Noor, cultivates her Instagram accounts with 1.3 million followers, balancing images of her luxurious modern lifestyle with articulate calls for her father to be given the chance to restore Iran’s freedom. In interview, Pahlavi avoids criticising his father’s rule, which was brought to an end by the revolution of 1979. Pressed, he says his father took on too much responsibility, but that Iran was on course to become South Korea, instead of resembling North Korea. In contrast, some of Pahlavi’s closest supporters appear to be, online at least, intolerant, rightwing and vengeful. After half a century of bloodshed and sacrifice, perhaps that is not surprising. Iranian exiles are inevitably deeply invested one way or another and Pahlavi has come to personify all that remains unresolved about Iran if the current regime was to collapse. Azizi, a long-term opponent of a return to monarchy, argues that Pahlavi and his advisers have a lot to explain. He said: “He now faces a huge credibility challenge. He asked people to come out and they did, but he did not seem to have a plan to follow through. He called for strikes that did not take place. He repeatedly promised intervention by Trump but not only did it not come, Trump refused to meet him and openly cast doubt on his chances even if he said some nice things about him personally.” Pahlavi had also courted the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting Israel in 2023, but now Israeli officials are briefing on Netanyahu’s scepticism about Pahlavi’s credentials and leadership skills. The tensions over Israel’s refusal to intervene is apparent among some of his closest advisers such as Saeed Ghasseminejad. On 15 January, he wrote on X: “If Israel remains on the sidelines while the massacre and execution of Iranians continues, it will shape Iranians’ perception of the Jewish state for generations. However, if Israel acts on the explicit promise Prime Minister Netanyahu made weeks ago and helps Iranians bring down the regime, a new era of Israeli-Iranian alliance under the ‘Cyrus Accords’ framework [a proposed peace agreement] will emerge, one where the sky’s the limit for economic, security, and military partnership. The regime’s back is to the wall, the decision is Israel’s to make and it will define Bibi’s legacy.” Pahlavi’s allies seek vengeance, not just against the Iranian state but against those that called for negotiations with that state. Amir Etemadi, another adviser, wrote: “The architects of the slaughter of the Iranian people are Khamenei, his underlings and his mercenaries; and their accomplices in crime are the apologists who, under the guise of analysts and journalists, whitewashed the reformist branch of the Islamic Republic time and again, enabling its greatest atrocities to unfold during the eras of Rouhani and Pezeshkian. You’re done for. Every last one of you – wherever you may be in the world.” Others promised that the “Reza boys” were coming to get the defenders of the regime. During the 1979 revolution, the many rivulets of opposition met to form one mighty river to overcome the shah. This time the tributaries inside and outside Iran remain separated. It has been a perennial problem since the late 90s. As the Iranian elite started to fracture, and protests grew, Pahlavi made several attempts to build opposition coalitions, including the National Council of Iran for Free Elections, launched in 2013. Most have struggled with internal disagreements. The diverse coalition formed at Georgetown University during the “women, life, freedom” movement in February 2023 rapidly fell apart. The Canada-based activist Hamed Esmaeilion, one of the six-strong council, without naming Pahlavi, wrote: “Imposing opinions is not democratic and the consensus of a group’s members, not just one member, is a precondition of a democratic movement.” Pahlavi’s critics also challenge his personal capacity to lead, saying he has been erratic about his envisaged role and the need for foreign intervention. Mostly Pahlavi describes himself as an honest broker, above the fray, promising to act with absolute neutrality to secure a transition. But at other times his aides appear to insist they alone can commandeer the protests and act as if Pahlavi aspires to be something of a ruling monarch on the model of his father. Pahlavi also faces criticism for urging Iranians on to the streets without a realistic plan. Insisting he was prepared to die for freedom, he declared: “All institutions and apparatuses that are responsible for the regime’s false propaganda and the severing of communications are considered legitimate targets.” The option of layered, non-violent resistance was spurned. Asked by CBS on 12 January whether he had to bear some responsibility for the deaths, he responded: “This is a war and war has casualties” – words that in isolation sound callous. Pahlavi’s claim that 50,000 members of the security services were primed to defect also proved optimistic. He revised the claim, saying: “Thousands of military and police forces did not go to work so as not to participate in the suppression.” Azizi hopes that with Pahlavi’s failures being more evident, “the moral authority of those inside Iran in prison such as Nobel prizewinner Narges Mohammadi and Mostafa Tajzadeh will grow”. Azizi claimed: “The so-called Republicans will now have the ball thrown at us in a way. It’s our turn to organise a serious, credible alternative to the regime, something we have consistently so far failed to do.”

Iran plans permanent break from global internet, say activists

Iran is planning to permanently break from the global internet, only allowing individuals vetted by the regime to connect online, according to Iranian digital rights activists. “A confidential plan is under way to turn international internet access into a ‘governmental privilege’,” according to a report from Filterwatch, an organisation monitoring Iran’s internet censorship, citing a number of sources in Iran. “State media and government spokespersons have already signaled that this is a permanent shift, warning that unrestricted access will not return after 2026.” Under the plan, Iranians who had security clearance or passed government checks would have access to a filtered version of the global internet, said Amir Rashidi, the leader of Filterwatch. All other Iranians would be allowed to access only the national internet: a domestic, parallel internet cut off from the broader world. Iran’s ongoing internet shutdown began on 8 January after 12 days of escalating anti-regime protests. Thousands of people have been killed, although the demonstrations appear to have slowed under the weight of a brutal crackdown. Only limited information is filtering out of the country because of the blackout, which is one of the most severe internet shutdowns in history, lasting longer than Egypt’s 2011 internet shutdown during the Tahrir square protests. A government spokesperson reportedly told Iranian media that the international internet would be shut off until at least Nowruz, the Persian new year, on 20 March. A former US state department official who worked on internet censorship said the idea that Iran might attempt a permanent break from the global internet was “plausible and terrifying”, but also costly. “It’s not out of the question that they’re going to do it, but seeing these situations unfold, the economic impact and the cultural impact will be really massive. And they may overplay their hand.” Rashidi said: “It looks like [authorities] are happy with the current level of internet connectivity, and they believe this kind of shutdown helped them to control the situation.” Iran’s current shutdown is the culmination of a 16-year effort to cement the regime’s control over the country’s internet. One side of this effort involves a sophisticated system to filter internet traffic, allowing a select few to access the global internet and blocking everyone else – a practice known as whitelisting. This whitelisting was probably enabled by technology exported by China, said researchers focused on Iran’s internet at Project Ainita and Outline Foundation, who asked not to be named owing to Iranian reprisals against digital rights researchers. This is made possible by high-capacity middleboxes, devices that attach to network cables to monitor and manipulate internet traffic. Systems commercially available now could be scaled up to allow authorities to inspect the internet traffic of entire countries – spying on individual users, as well as blocking websites, protocols, and certain VPN tools. “Basically, there’s this censorship equipment that is sitting on every network, and the government can prevent connections going in both directions,” they said. The other side of this is Iran’s national internet, which can only be accessed inside the country. It allows all Iranians to use a handful of websites and applications purpose-built by the regime, including Iranian messaging services, search engines, navigation apps and a video streaming service similar to Netflix. It is monitored and has virtually no links to the broader internet. Iran has been working towards national internet since 2009, after authorities briefly shut down the internet during mass protests after the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and realised that a wholesale shutdown had extreme costs. “They literally just pulled the plug without thinking. They had never done it before,” said the researchers at Outline Foundation and Project Ainita. “And it basically threw the entire internet, and it really damaged a lot of things on their end as well.” By 2012, the government had established the Supreme Council of Cyberspace and started to plan for a splintered, domestic internet. Over time, authorities started to refine their internet shutdowns – blocking services such as Facebook, Twitter and Google during the 2012 protests, but leaving other economically valuable services running. In the 10 years that followed, Iranian authorities used a “carrot and stick” approach to force online businesses, banks and internet service providers to move their key infrastructure – datacentres and offices – inside the country, said the researchers at Project Ainita and Outline. Authorities provided tax breaks to those who did, and prevented those who refused from working in Iran. In 2015, a group of researchers used Bitcoin to buy server space in Iran and began to scan the country’s IP address space; the range of addresses allocated to devices on a network. They made a startling discovery: Iran was building a domestically connected internet entirely partitioned from the outside world, using the same protocols to connect the internal network for a corporate office or home. “It’s like when you’re in your office space, you’ve got file servers or you’ve got HR systems, which, if you go to a coffee shop, you’re not going to be able to reach them because it’s in an internal network. It’s impossible to route outwards,” said one of the researchers. Iran succeeded. The national internet has been working throughout the protests, and is now the only option most Iranians have to go online. It is likely to evolve, but it remains inaccessible to outside users, and unconnected to the broader internet. The former US state department official said the powers Iran had revealed in recent days, in terms of its ability to control the internet, were considerable; beyond those of some other authoritarian regimes who might wish to do the same. But it remains to be seen if Iran can create a new, permanent online reality. “The digital rights community is right to raise the alarm. But the impacts of this will be really severe for Iranian authorities, who will bear responsibility for that harm to their economy.”

How Madrid’s Prado Museum is trying to avoid becoming like ‘the Metro at rush-hour’

Friday morning found Diego Velázquez striking the familiar pose he has held for the past 370 years, staring out, brush in one hand, palette in the other, from the huge canvas of Las Meninas. The 14 people who stood before the painting to meet the Spanish artist’s haughty gaze – not to mention the heavy eyes of the dozy mastiff in the picture’s foreground – were among the first visitors of the day to Madrid’s Prado Museum. Given recent comments by the Prado’s director, they may have felt it was worth braving the January cold and drizzle to get through the door as early as possible. On Wednesday, Miguel Falomir told a press conference that the museum, which welcomed a record 3.5 million visitors last year, felt a threshold had been reached. “The Prado doesn’t need a single visitor more,” he said. “We feel comfortable with 3.5 million. A museum’s success can collapse it, like the Louvre, with some rooms becoming oversaturated. The important thing is not to collapse.” With that in mind, Falomir added, the Prado was exploring how best to preserve – and preferably enhance – the visitor experience. Among the ideas for guaranteeing quality over quantity are optimising entrances to the museum, rethinking the size of visiting groups, and making sure people know they are not allowed to take photos in the galleries. The queues of mid-January can hardly be compared with those of the summer months, when they stretch on and on beneath the merciless Madrid sun, but getting into the museum this week proved painless. After buying a ticket online on Thursday, the Guardian pitched up at the museum at 10.30am on Friday, queued at the entrance for 90 seconds and was through security in less than a minute. But the real test lay inside – especially as Falomir had insisted that visiting the Prado “can’t be like catching the Metro at rush-hour”. He may well have been haunted by the words of his counterpart at the Louvre, who admitted last year that visiting the Paris museum was “a physical ordeal”. Although the initial pace through the galleries was slow, it soon picked up and the crowds were more fidgety shoals than heaving masses. Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights proved predictably popular, with 50 people standing in front of it and obscuring the lower half of its enchantments. But then a tour group moved on and a space opened up at the rope in front of the triptych. The Goya rooms were a better bet. A suspiciously well-behaved school group hovered beneath Fight to the Death with Cudgels and the unbearably poignant The Drowning Dog. In a nearby room, Alexander Jute from Stockholm was sitting on a bench with his four children and drinking in the horrors of Goya’s The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid and The Fight Against the Mamelukes. How was their visit going? How were the crowds? “I think it’s perfect,” said Jute. “Perhaps it could even be a little more crowded. I’ve been here a couple of times before – including in the summer, and that was much busier.” Down a corridor that led off a granite staircase echoing with the shouts and laughter of another school party, Laura Moya and her partner, Enrique Ayala, were also pleasantly surprised by the lack of crowds. “We’re not seeing too many people here today,” said Moya. “The only problem is knowing where to start but the audioguide is very good.” The couple, who were visiting Madrid from the south-eastern region of Murcia, said they had been relieved to be able to stash their coats and bags as they had heard the cloakrooms sometimes filled up quickly. “We came early to beat the queues,” added Moya. “It’s a great experience; wherever you look you find something.” Visitors hoping for a more solitary trot around the Prado can find respite in some of the museum’s less trodden areas. The Alonso Cano gallery was deserted, leaving no one to appreciate the 17th-century Spanish master’s Dead Christ Supported by an Angel, his Penitent Magdalene, or his Saint Bernard and the Virgin. Even the room holding such treasures as Velázquez’s portraits of court entertainers, including The Buffoon Calabacillas, was almost empty save for Enrique, a Madrid local who is also a member of the museum. He said his frequent visits to the Prado had never been marred by impossible crowds. “Visitor numbers keep going up and up and I’m glad that they do,” said Enrique. “It’s really good that people want to come and see culture.” Some cultural draws, however, are more potent than others. By 11.10 on Friday morning, room 12, which houses Las Meninas, was filling up and growing noisy. Visitors attempting to take photos of the picture were politely pounced on by sharp-eyed attendants: “No photos, por favor. No photos.” Velázquez appeared to glower briefly from the canvas. And the dog dozed on.