Politics
New clashes hit Iran as opposition urges protests, strikes

- Authorities blame unrest on “rioters”.
- Opposition parties call for general strike.
- At least 27 protesters killed in protests.
Security forces used tear gas and live fire to disperse protesters in Iran, rights groups said on Thursday, as people angered by economic crisis kept up their challenge to the authorities and exiled opposition groups urged new protests as well as strikes.
Twelve days of protests have shaken the clerical authorities under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei already battling economic crisis after years of sanctions and recovering from the June war against Israel.
The movement, which originated with a shutdown on the Tehran bazaar on December 28 after the rial plunged to record lows, has spread nationwide and is now being marked by larger scale demonstrations.
Authorities have blamed unrest on “rioters” and the judiciary chief has vowed there would be “no leniency” in bringing them to justice.
On Wednesday, an Iranian police officer was stabbed to death in west of Tehran “during efforts to control unrest”, the Iranian Fars news agency said.
Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah ousted by the 1979 Islamic revolution and a key exiled opposition figure, said the turnout on Wednesday had been “unprecedented” in this wave of demonstrations and called for major new protests on Thursday evening.
He said in a message on social media he had received reports the “regime is deeply frightened and is attempting, once again, to cut off the internet” to thwart the protests.
Iraq-based Iranian Kurdish opposition parties, including the Komala party which is outlawed by Tehran, called for a general strike on Thursday in Kurdish-populated areas in western Iran which have seen intense protest activity.
Soleimani statues attacked
The HRANA monitor published a video of protesters in Kuhchenar in the southern Fars province cheering overnight as they pulled down a statue of the former foreign operations commander of the Revolutionary Guards Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US strike in January 2020 and is hailed as a national hero by the Islamic republic.
Persian-language TV channels based outside Iran also posted images of a statue of Soleimani in the central city of Kashan being set on fire. It was not immediately possible to verify the images.
HRANA said that according to its count, protests had taken place in 348 locations over the last 11 days in all of Iran’s 31 provinces.
It also published a video of people massing late at night in the Tehran satellite city of Karaj and lighting fires in the streets and also images of security forces using tear gas to disperse a protest in the Caspian Sea town of Tonekabon.
Images it said were taken on Wednesday in the western city of Abadan showing security forces firing on protesters.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights group said security forces on Wednesday “opened fire on protesters, used tear gas and violently assaulted civilians” during a protest in the key southeastern hub of Kerman.
The Hengaw rights group, which focuses on Kurds and other ethnic minorities in western Iran, said the call for a strike had been widely followed in some 30 towns and cities, posting footage of shuttered shops in the western provinces of Ilam, Kermanshah and Lorestan.
‘Unlawful force’
The protests are being characterised by larger-scale demonstrations, with hundreds marching through a main avenue in the northeastern city of Bojnord on Wednesday in a video verified by AFP.
Demonstrators are repeating slogans against the clerical leadership including “this is the final battle, Pahlavi will return” and “Seyyed Ali will be toppled”, in reference to Khamenei.
IHR said on Tuesday at least 27 protesters including five teenagers under the age of 18, have been confirmed to have been killed in a crackdown on the protests, warning the death toll will climb as more killings are verified.
The protests are the biggest in Iran for three years after the last major protest wave in 2022-2023 which was sparked by the custody death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress code for women.
Rights groups have also accused authorities of resorting to tactics including raiding hospitals to detain wounded protesters.
“More than 10 days of protests have been met with unlawful force,” said Amnesty International. “Iran’s security forces have injured and killed both protesters and bystanders,” it added.
Politics
New video fuels anger over Minnesota shooting

- White House reposts video of shooting of Renee Good in Minnesota.
- Before being killed, woman heard saying, “fine, I’m not mad at you.”
- State officials vow criminal probe, citing lack of FBI cooperation.
MINNEAPOLIS: The White House on Friday reposted on social media a new video taken from the mobile phone of the immigration officer who fatally shot a Minnesota woman in her car this week, adding to the evidence around an incident that has sparked days of nationwide protests.
The 47-second video shows 37-year-old Renee Good telling the officer, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you,” moments before he opens fire after Good puts the car in gear in an apparent effort to pull back into the street.
The new clip is likely to further inflame tensions between state officials and officials in President Donald Trump’s administration, who have offered sharply different accounts of the shooting. Minnesota authorities on Friday said they were opening their own criminal investigation, after some state leaders said the FBI was refusing to co-operate with state investigators.
The video, obtained by the website Alpha News and verified by Reuters, begins as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, Jonathan Ross, exits his car and approaches Good’s Honda SUV, which is partially blocking traffic. A black dog is visible through an open rear window.
As he circles around the front of the car, Good reverses farther out into the street before speaking to him through her open window. Ross then continues around the vehicle’s rear, where he films the vehicle’s licence plate and encounters Good’s wife, Becca Good, in the street. She tells him, “We don’t change our plates every morning, just so you know. It’ll be the same plate when you come talk to us later. That’s fine. US citizen.”
Becca Good, who was filming the ICE agent with her own phone, then adds: “You want to come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy.”
At that point, another ICE agent approaches Renee Good in the vehicle and orders her to get out of the car. She can be seen reversing briefly, then putting the car into gear and turning the steering wheel, apparently trying to drive away.
As the car moves forward, Ross shouts “Whoa!” Shots can be heard, and the car briefly disappears from the frame of the video as the officer’s hand holding the phone appears to flail about.
The video then shows the car careering down the street, while someone can be heard muttering, “Fucking bitch.”
Vice President JD Vance, who has accused Good of deliberately using her car as a weapon, reposted the video, saying it showed the officer’s life was endangered.
Other videos of the shooting show Good turning her wheels away from Ross as she drives forward, while he fires three shots while jumping backwards from the front of the car. The final two shots appear to be aimed through the driver’s side window, after the car’s front bumper has already passed by the officer’s legs.
It is unclear whether Ross made any contact with the car, but videos show he stayed on his feet and walked calmly towards the car after the shooting.
Officials from the Republican Trump administration have defended the shooting as self-defence and accused Good of an act of “domestic terrorism” – a narrative described by Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as “garbage” based on the video footage.
Good was a mother of three, including a 6-year-old son. Becca Good issued a statement to Minnesota Public Radio on Friday, saying the two had “stopped to support our neighbours”.
“We had whistles,” she wrote. “They had guns.”
She also described her late wife as someone who had “sparkles coming out of her pores”.
“Renee lived by an overarching belief: there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow,” she said. “Renee was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.”
Separate investigations
Mary Moriarty, the top prosecutor for Minneapolis’ Hennepin County, and the state’s Democratic attorney general, Keith Ellison, said on Friday they were opening their own probe into the shooting.
The announcement came one day after the state’s lead investigative agency, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said the FBI had reversed its initial co-operation and blocked the BCA from scene evidence, witness interviews and other material.
The decision could set up separate, parallel probes into the shooting.
US officials, including Vance, have dismissed the idea that a federal officer could face state criminal charges. But Moriarty said the decision was hers to make.
“To be sure, there are complex legal issues involved when a federal law enforcement officer is involved. But the law is clear: we do have jurisdiction to make this decision,” she said.
The announcement underscored how the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Democratic-run cities has frayed trust between local and federal officials.
Earlier in the day, Frey accused the Trump administration of trying to predetermine the investigation’s outcome by cutting out state authorities.
“This is a time to follow the law,” Frey said. “This is not a time to hide from the facts.”
In Portland, Oregon, on Thursday afternoon, a US Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a man and woman in their car after an attempted vehicle stop. As in Minnesota, the Department of Homeland Security said the driver “weaponised” the car in an effort to run over the agent, who fired in self-defence.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, echoing Frey, said he could not be sure the government’s account was grounded in fact without an independent investigation.
The two shootings have drawn thousands of protesters in Minneapolis, Portland and other US cities, with more demonstrations expected over the weekend.
In both cases, Democratic mayors and governors have called on the Trump administration to pull federal officers out, arguing that their presence is sowing chaos and needlessly creating tensions on the streets.
While the operation is part of Trump’s broader immigration crackdown, the president has for months aimed political attacks at the state, particularly its large Somali-American community.
Politics
Minneapolis asks to join probe into woman’s killing by immigration officer

The mayor of Minneapolis called on Friday for state investigators to be allowed to join the federal probe into the killing of a US woman by immigration enforcement, accusing the Trump administration of pre-judging the case.
Minnesota officials have complained that their law enforcement has been excluded from the investigation into the killing of motorist Renee Nicole Good by a federal immigration officer on Wednesday.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to paint the victim as a “domestic terrorist,” insisting that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer who fatally shot her was acting in self-defence.
“This is not the time to bend the rules. This is a time to follow the law […] The fact that Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice and this presidential administration has already come to a conclusion about those facts is deeply concerning,” Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, told a briefing on Friday.
“We know that they’ve already determined much of the investigation,” he said, adding that the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has consistently run such investigations.
“Why not include them in the process?” Frey said.
“We’re not even talking just about full control here. We’re talking about being at the table.”
On Thursday US Vice President JD Vance asserted that the ICE officer, named in US media as Jonathan Ross, had “absolute immunity.”
Minnesota officials have said that local investigators were initially invited by the FBI to participate in the inquiry, but were subsequently blocked from the probe.
Good, 37, was shot in the head on as she apparently tried to drive away from ICE in the midwestern US city as officers approached her car, which they said blocked their way.
Good was one of four people who have been killed by ICE since Trump launched his immigration crackdown and seven others have been injured, reported The Trace, an outlet that tracks gun violence.
Large, noisy crowds gathered around Minneapolis in protest on Thursday, chanting slogans against ICE. Federal immigration officers armed with pepperball guns and tear gas wrestled several protesters to the ground.
In a separate incident on Thursday afternoon, US federal agents shot and wounded two people in the western city of Portland, Oregon, local police said.
“ICE needs to get out of Minnesota, we don’t need them here, these are not criminals — and actually ICE they are the criminals,” Minneapolis resident Eleanor told AFP.
Politics
Khamenei insists ‘won’t back down’ in face of Iran protests

- Trump to be “overthrown” like Iran’s imperial dynasty in 1979: Khamenei.
- Rights groups accuse authorities of opening fire on protesters.
- Pahlavi says rallies show how “massive crowd forces LEAs to retreat”.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday insisted that the government would “not back down” in the face of protests after the biggest rallies yet in an almost two-week movement sparked by anger over the rising cost of living.
Chanting slogans including “death to the dictator” and setting fire to official buildings, crowds of people opposed to the establishment marched through major cities late on Thursday.
Internet monitor Netblocks said authorities had imposed a total connectivity blackout late on Thursday and added early on Friday that the country has “now been offline for 12 hours […] in an attempt to suppress sweeping protests”.
The demonstrations represent one of the biggest challenges yet to the nation in its over four-and-a-half decades of existence, with protesters openly calling for an end to its theocratic rule.
But Khamenei struck a defiant tone in his first comments on the protests that have been escalating since January 3, calling the demonstrators “vandals” and “saboteurs”, in a speech broadcast on state TV.
Khamenei said US President Donald Trump’s hands “are stained with the blood of more than a thousand Iranians”, in apparent reference to Israel’s June war against the Islamic republic which the US supported and joined with strikes of its own.
He predicted the “arrogant” US leader would be “overthrown” like the imperial dynasty that ruled Iran up to the 1979 revolution.
“Last night in Tehran, a bunch of vandals came and destroyed a building that belongs to them to please the US president,” he said in an address to supporters, as men and women in the audience chanted the mantra of “death to America”.
“Everyone knows the Islamic republic came to power with the blood of hundreds of thousands of honourable people, it will not back down in the face of saboteurs,” he added.
Trump said late on Thursday that “enthusiasm to overturn that regime is incredible” and warned that if the Iranian authorities responded by killing protesters, “we’re going to hit them very hard. We’re ready to do it.”
Even larger
AFP has verified videos showing crowds of people, as well as vehicles honking in support, filling a part of the vast Ayatollah Kashani Boulevard late on Thursday.
The crowd could be heard chanting “death to the dictator” in reference to Khamenei, 86, who has ruled the republic since 1989.
Other videos showed significant protests in other cities, including Tabriz in the north and the holy city of Mashhad in the east, as well as the Kurdish-populated west of the country, including the regional hub Kermanshah.
Several videos showed protesters setting fire to the entrance to the regional branch of state television in the central city of Isfahan. It was not immediately possible to verify the images.
Flames were also seen in the governor’s building in Shazand, the capital of Markazi province in central Iran, after protesters gathered outside, other videos showed.
The protests late on Thursday were the biggest in Iran since 2022-2023 rallies nationwide sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic republic’s strict dress code.
Rights groups have accused authorities of firing on protesters in the current demonstrations, killing dozens. However, the latest videos from Tehran did not show intervention by security forces.
The son of the shah of Iran ousted by the 1979 Islamic Revolution, US-based Reza Pahlavi, who had called for major protests on Thursday, urged a new show of force in the streets on Friday.
Pahlavi, in a new video message early on Friday, said Thursday’s rallies showed how “a massive crowd forces the repressive forces to retreat”.
He called for bigger protests on Friday “to make the crowd even larger so that the regime’s repressive power becomes even weaker”.
-
Entertainment2 days agoDoes new US food pyramid put too much steak on your plate?
-
Sports5 days agoVAR review: Why was Wirtz onside in Premier League, offside in Europe?
-
Politics2 days agoUK says provided assistance in US-led tanker seizure
-
Politics5 days agoChina’s birth-rate push sputters as couples stay child-free
-
Entertainment5 days agoMinnesota Governor Tim Walz to drop out of 2026 race, official confirmation expected soon
-
Sports5 days agoSteelers escape Ravens’ late push, win AFC North title
-
Business5 days agoAldi’s Christmas sales rise to £1.65bn
-
Sports5 days agoFACI invites applications for 2026 chess development project | The Express Tribune
