Interview: "They feel abandoned" and need Trump's help, former IRGC officer says

Photo: Reuters

IRAN AFFAIRS: What began as an economic grievance quickly snowballed into demands for change and an end to the Islamic regime that has held the country under its thumb for nearly 50 years.

'THEY LOVE Trump, they love America, but right now they feel abandoned, and it hurts.' Trump said he has no reason to strike, but protesters have been asking for US intervention and thousands of Iranian citizens have been killed since the protests began.

Over the past month, the people of Iran took to the streets to fight for their future. What started as an economic grievance turned fast into calls for revolution and the end of the Islamic regime that has crushed the country for nearly 50 years.

When President Trump promised to help the protesters, Iranians around the world felt real hope. Change seemed possible at last, but then he changed course, which left the people feeling abandoned and alone.

"They need the Americans. They depend on the Americans," Roni Insaz, an Iranian-born former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, told The Jerusalem Post. He said the US may be the Iranians' last hope for a better life.

Trump's reversal has the world watching with bated breath and we now see that anything could happen next. The president said he has no reason to strike as long as the regime stops executions, which it looks like haven't happened according to reports from within Iran. Protesters have begged for US intervention and Insaz asked, isn't that reason enough?

"There is enormous anger among the Iranian people currently toward Trump. He promised things, and now they feel he's backing away," Insaz said. "They love Trump, they love America – but right now they feel abandoned, and it hurts."

"It's very difficult for Iranian forces to kill Iranians, because they are the same people," he told the Post. In times of mass unrest, the IRGC brings in loyal militias from Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Those fighters have no problem shooting into crowds of Iranians. "They shoot at free people. You could say that the Iranian police or the revolutionary forces are not usually the ones who kill like this, and certainly not 35,000 or 40,000 people in two days. That's why they bring in special forces from outside to shoot and kill people," he said.

What sets this wave apart is the end of fear. Insaz said protesters no longer ask for small changes or policy tweaks. They demand the full dismantling of the system. This is a point of no return, and the regime knows it which is why it has unleashed unprecedented force. Executions and mass arrests serve as punishment and as a warning to stop others from joining. The regime's use of foreign militias and the mass killings became possible because of the digital blackout that started on January 8. Internet access has only started to return. Insaz said that terrifies the regime.

"They don’t care about people's lives, especially the outsiders; they don't care at all," he said. "But they are very afraid that what's happening will spread around the world and that people will see the murders."

When the IRGC cuts communications, it goes far beyond shutting down service. They confiscate phones, go door to door, and do whatever it takes to keep the truth hidden. Once the Internet is fully back, the world will see horrors not witnessed in many years. "I believe there is evidence of genocide in Iran, and I believe we will see it soon," he said.

‘Pahlavi Barmigardeh’

Even with Iran cut off from the world, one chant rings out across the diaspora: "Pahlavi Barmigardeh.' "Pahlavi will return." It echoes with "Javid Shah," "Long live the Shah." It calls for Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to return nearly half a century after his father's exile.


"Reza Pahlavi was a guest in my home," Insaz shared. "I had a long conversation with him about Iran, first in 2022 and again in 2024. He said very clearly that the uprising depends on American support, and that it will happen.

"If the Americans give it a boost, it will happen," Insaz said. He still believes a US strike on Iran could come soon.

Insaz stressed that his hope for US help and a free Iran comes from the voice of an entire people, and aside from the Greta Thunberg crowd, it appears to be a strong voice.

Despite decades of regime hostility, he rejects the idea of permanent enmity between Iranians and Americans or Israelis that he sees as regime propaganda, not reality.

"The Iranian people are good people, strong people," he said. Many feel real affinity toward Israel and the Jewish people. The old bonds from the Shah’s time could return.

“They love Israel, they love Jews, and they want peace,” he said. "We could do very good business together. In the past, during the time of the shah, there was cooperation, tourism, strong ties. It will happen again, God willing."

His hope rests on faith. "With God's help, Iran will enter a new state," he said. A future shaped by the people, not the Islamic rulers.

Without strong global pressure, the regime will see silence as approval. The violence will grow, and for those in the streets risking everything, foreign support is not just words, it's a lifeline.

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Born and raised in Iran, with family and friends still under the Islamic Republic, Insaz speaks for many. He calls on the world to stay engaged and alert. Refuse to accept repression through silence.

Until then, the most urgent demand is clear: Iran's future must not be forgotten. The voices seeking peace must be heard beyond its borders.

"The world must not be silent about what is happening in Iran. Do not stop thinking about Iran or its future. That’s what the Iranian people are asking for today," he concluded.

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It's Getting Worse: Iran Protests Turn Deadly as Anti-Regime Demonstrations Enter Fifth Day

Iran's rulers are once again discovering a truth they have spent decades trying to suppress: that a population pushed far enough will eventually push back.

For a fifth consecutive day on Thursday, protests spread across Tehran and multiple provincial cities, with clashes reported overnight and mounting evidence of fatalities. State-linked media, human rights organizations, and opposition groups all acknowledged deaths, even as the authorities continued their familiar efforts at obfuscation and minimization.

Reuters reported that several people have been killed since unrest escalated earlier this week, drawing on Iranian media and human rights sources. Officials have confirmed at least one death, while additional fatalities were reported in multiple provinces, an admission that itself suggests the true number may be higher.

The opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) told Fox News Digital that demonstrations and street clashes continued Thursday morning in Tehran and in cities including Marvdasht, Kermanshah, Delfan, and Arak. The group claimed that two protesters were killed by direct gunfire in Lordegan, a report that could not be independently verified.

The protests began on Sunday not with ideological slogans but with economic despair. Shopkeepers and merchants, long regarded as a conservative backbone of Iranian society, took to the streets over soaring inflation, unemployment, and the collapsing value of the national currency. The unrest quickly outgrew the bazaars, spreading to students and broader public demonstrations across the country. Economic grievance, as so often in Iran, has proved to be the gateway to political revolt.

In Lordegan, in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province, clashes intensified overnight. Fars News Agency, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, reported that crowds threw stones at government buildings, including the governor’s office, the judiciary, the Martyrs Foundation, the Friday prayer complex, and several banks. 

Police responded with tear gas, and multiple buildings were heavily damaged. Fars acknowledged that two people were killed, without clarifying whether they were protesters or members of the security forces, a studied ambiguity that has become standard practice.

The Kurdish rights group Hengaw said protesters in Lordegan were killed by security forces. In Kuhdasht, authorities claimed that a member of the Basij volunteer paramilitary force was killed and 13 others wounded, blaming demonstrators. Hengaw disputed this account, telling Reuters that the individual was in fact a protester killed by security forces. Reuters said it could not independently confirm either version.

Elsewhere, Iran International reported that a 37-year-old man was shot dead in Fooladshahr, in Isfahan province, during overnight protests. The outlet said it verified the man’s identity and reviewed video footage, while provincial police confirmed the death of a 37-year-old citizen but offered no further details.

Six women detained during protests in Tehran have since been transferred to the women’s ward of Evin prison, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a reminder that repression in Iran is rarely confined to the streets alone.

President Donald Trump and other U.S. administration officials voiced support for the demonstrators this week. Speaking Monday, Trump pointed to Iran’s economic collapse and long-standing public anger, though he stopped short of explicitly calling for regime change.

Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, was less restrained. In a statement on the continuing protests, she said:

"The four-day uprising by merchants, students, and other sectors of society signals the Iranian people’s determination to be free from religious tyranny. This wretched regime is doomed to be overthrown by the risen populace and rebellious youth. The final word is spoken in the streets by the people and the rebellious youth, those with nothing left to lose. This regime must go."

The last nationwide protests of comparable scale followed the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after her detention by Iran’s morality police in October 2022. Those demonstrations centered on women’s rights and state repression. The present unrest, by contrast, is rooted primarily in economic collapse—but in several cities protesters are already directing their fury squarely at the political leadership itself.

Iran’s economy remains crushed by years of international sanctions, rampant inflation, and currency depreciation. On Wednesday, authorities declared a nationwide shutdown across much of the country, officially blaming extreme cold weather, while offering talks with merchants and trade unions over what they described as “legitimate demands.” The gesture was transparently tactical.

Another dissident voice, exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, appealed on X for international support, urging the world “to stand with the people of Iran.” He added:

"The current regime has reached the end of the road. It stands at its most fragile: weak, deeply divided, and unable to suppress the courage of a rising nation. The growing protests show this year will be the definitive moment for change."

Iran has endured repeated waves of unrest over the past decade. Each time, the regime has survived by force, fear, and fatigue. Yet each eruption leaves the system weaker, more exposed, and more reliant on violence to maintain the illusion of control. What is unfolding now is not an aberration. It is the logical consequence of a state that has long governed against its own people—and is finally being answered in the streets.

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UPDATE: Not only have Iranians taken full control over many towns, they have taken control of many police stations and taken over equipment. Islamic forces have begun shooting protesters, so the number of casualties is obviously going to grow. The revolutionaries are now using Molotov cocktails and have hit an IRGC base with them. IRGC members have been captured across the country--it isn't know what their fate is or will be. Statues of the regime are being torn down. 

It's highly likely that tomorrow, Friday, will be very vicious. Let's pray for Iran and the revolution. Arab proxies have been brought in by Iraq to deal with the protesters.

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"Javid Shah!" Iranians calling for return of Pahlavis, their king

Reza Pahlavi

In the streets of Iran, a phrase once banished to the whispers of exile and treason, has roared back into the open: “Javid Shah” – Long Live the Shah.

What was for decades politically radioactive is now echoing through Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad, Ahvaz, Hamadan, and even the clerical stronghold of Qom. Videos smuggled out of the country show crowds chanting it without fear, alongside calls for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and open support for the exiled Pahlavi dynasty. For a regime whose entire legitimacy rests on the destruction of that dynasty and the systematic erasure of its memory, this is an existential threat. It signals that public fury has transcended complaints about prices or policy and become a wholesale rejection of the theocratic order itself.

The unrest began when Tehran’s bazaari merchants, that ancient and formidable class, shuttered their shops in response to the catastrophic collapse of the rial, which at one point traded at over 1.4 million to the dollar on the open market against an official rate of 42,000. 

Economic despair, long simmering, exploded into outright defiance. But the slogans quickly outgrew mere grievances over bread and butter. Crowds chanted, "This is the final battle! Pahlavi will return," and "The shah will return to the homeland, and Zahhak (despot) will be overthrown," drawing on the ancient Persian myth of the tyrannical Zahhak to cast the current Supreme Leader as the monster of the age. Other voices rang out with "No to Gaza, no to Lebanon, I give my life for Iran," a blunt repudiation of the regime’s lavish funding of foreign proxies while its own people starve.

The security forces have so far responded with restraint: tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets. Reports speak of at least one death, a Basij militiaman killed in clashes, but the regime seems cautious, offering vague promises of "dialogue" rather than the full brutality it has deployed in the past. 

It knows that excessive force could tip the balance, turning manageable discontent into uncontrollable revolution. Yet the chants already suggest that a deeper shift is underway.To Western ears, "Javid Shah" might sound like a naive plea for literal monarchy restored. In Iran, its resonance is far more profound.

The Islamic Republic has spent forty-six years demonising the Pahlavi era as a time of corruption, foreign subservience, and moral decay. To invoke the Shah now is a deliberate assault on the regime's founding myth. More than that, it expresses a yearning for an Iran rooted in its own pre-Islamic, imperial history, an Iran ruled by kings and emperors for millennia, not by clerics obsessed with a pan-Islamic ummah and the export of revolution. 

The Islamic Republic, should it limp to its fiftieth anniversary in 2029, will still represent less than two per cent of Iran's recorded history. The return of monarchist symbols is a reminder that the clerics are the historical interlopers.

Political change often begins with the breaking of taboos. The Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022 shattered the enforced consensus around compulsory hijab. Now, protesters are reaching for symbols the regime has spent decades trying to bury. When people abandon the language dictated by the state and embrace the forbidden, authority begins to crumble. "Javid Shah" is precisely such a forbidden symbol.

Iran's bazaaris have always been more than traders. For centuries they have been a political force, their strikes capable of paralyzing the economy and shifting the course of history: toppling the Tobacco Concession in the 1890s, driving the Constitutional Revolution, supporting Mossadegh’s oil nationalization, and, most fatefully, helping bring down the monarchy itself in 1978–79 through prolonged closures that starved the Shah’s government of revenue.

Even under the Islamic Republic, born of an alliance between clerics and bazaaris, the merchants have periodically flexed their muscle during economic crises. The question this week was whether their strike was merely about money or something more fundamental. The fact that Pahlavi's name now passes their lips provides the answer.

What makes the present moment especially dangerous for the regime is that the bazaaris are not acting alone. Students, that other historic engine of Iranian upheaval, have joined them. University campuses, once hotbeds of Islamist and leftist fervor that helped destroy the monarchy in 1979, are now filled with young people chanting in support of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. For a generation born long after the revolution, the Pahlavi era is not lived memory but a symbol of an Iran free from clerical control, ideological compulsion, and the squandering of national wealth on foreign adventures.

When bazaaris and students align, Iranian governments have rarely survived. In 1979 they combined to fell the Shah. Today they converge against the very system they once helped install.

Against this backdrop, Reza Pahlavi has positioned himself as the natural focal point for a fragmented opposition. In recent months he has grown bolder: calling openly for regime change, convening broad coalitions of dissidents, and outlining principles for a future Iran, territorial integrity, equality, individual liberties, separation of religion and state. He has stressed that any return of monarchy must be decided by referendum and that he seeks no personal power unless freely chosen by the people.
IRGC,

As protests escalated, he issued a direct appeal: "Today is a time for greater solidarity. I call on all segments of society to join your fellow citizens in the streets and raise your voices demanding the downfall of this system."

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One exiled opposition figure told reporters this week: "It is crystal clear that the population accepts the leadership of Prince Reza Pahlavi… Now it is up to the prince to expand his circle and show that his professional cadres can take over the government. In that case, the military could join the people."

Whether these protests will gather the momentum to topple the regime remains uncertain, but it's looking as if it will. Several police stations have been overrun and burned and clerics are removing their clerical garb and running for the hills.

Repression could yet intensify. But something irrevocable has already happened. On the streets of the Islamic Republic, the people are once again calling for their king. And in a land with such a long memory, that call carries a weight no theocracy can easily dismiss.

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