After 35 years of ruling Iran, Ali Khamenei is running out of options fast.

The 86-year-old supreme leader is facing his most serious challenge yet. Protesters chant “death to Khamenei” rather than the regime’s traditional “death to America”.

Protests against him have entered their second week and spread to 340 places in all 31 provinces of Iran. At least 65 people are dead because of his response to the demonstrations, with the death toll expected to climb.

In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran’s Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran.Credit: AP

The revolt has engulfed small, economically devastated cities across Iran’s poorest provinces – places that should form the regime’s support base.

That is a key difference to the 2009 Green Movement, which was concentrated in Tehran, and the 2022 protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, who was beaten to death by Iran’s “morality police” for not wearing a headscarf.

Khamenei has always crushed dissent with brute force, which succeeded in 2009 and 2019, when protests were more concentrated geographically.

People in the capital and major cities are angry again in this new uprising, but the scale of demonstrations across small, impoverished cities suggests a breadth of fury that cannot be suppressed without casualties in the thousands.

A protester in Germany supporting the Iran protests, showing a sign saying “death to Khamenei”.Credit: AP

The regime has made clear that demonstrators face execution or the threat of having........

© The Sydney Morning Herald