In late December, Tehran’s bazaar merchants began protesting against Iran’s theocratic rulers over the sharp collapse of the currency.

These protests quickly spread nationwide, although the level of participation remained limited, initially. The situation changed when Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s former shah, issued a public call for demonstrations last Thursday and Friday.

This altered the dynamics of the protest movement. The authorities appeared not to take Pahlavi’s call seriously, suggesting they did not believe the US-based Pahlavi had significant influence among the population. State media openly mocked the call.

Yet, Pahlavi’s message spread rapidly online. His video on Instagram has received more than 90 million views and nearly 500,000 comments as of January 13. These are unprecedented figures for any Persian content on social media.

Huge crowds then took to the streets, reportedly spreading to all of Iran’s 31 provinces, with many chanting for Pahlavi’s return to the country.

This marked the first time since the 1979 Iranian revolution that a political figure issued a protest call explicitly framed around regime change and people responded at scale.

In 2009, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who lost a contested presidential election to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, mobilised large protests that became known as the Green Movement, but these largely called for reforms rather than........

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