TEHRAN, JAN 16: Tensions in Iran have subsided after three weeks of protests under an internet blackout, monitors said on Friday, a week after the start of the largest demonstrations in years challenging the country’s rulers.

The son of Iran’s late shah, however, said he was confident the government would fall and called for intervention, though the threat of new military action by the United States against Iran has appeared to have receded for the time being.

Protests sparked by economic grievances started with a shutdown in the Tehran bazaar on December 28 but turned into a mass movement demanding the removal of the system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 revolution.

People started pouring into the streets in big cities from January 8, but authorities immediately enforced a shutdown of the internet that has lasted over a week.

Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s late shah, told a news conference in Washington that the government “will fall — not if, but when.”

“I will return to Iran,” he said.

Monitor Netblocks said that the “total internet blackout” in Iran had now lasted over 180 hours, longer than a similar measure that was imposed during the 2019 protests.

Amnesty International said this was being backed up by the use of heavily armed patrols and checkpoints to counter nationwide protests, with security forces visible in the streets.

‘Give Iran a chance’
Trump, who backed and joined Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in June, had not ruled out new military action against Tehran and made clear he was keeping a close eye on if any protesters were executed.

But a senior Saudi official told AFP on Thursday that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman led “a long, frantic, diplomatic last-minute effort to convince President Trump to give Iran a chance to show good intention”.

While Washington appeared to have stepped back, the White House said on Thursday that “all options remain on the table for the president”.

Attention had focused on the fate of a single protester, Erfan Soltani, a 26-year-old who rights activists and Washington said was set to be executed as early as Wednesday.

The Iranian judiciary, however, said Soltani had not been sentenced to death, and his charges meant he did not risk capital punishment.

Rights groups have estimated that up to 20,000 people have been arrested. Security officials cited by the Tasnim news agency on Friday said around 3,000 people were arrested.

‘All Iranians united’
The US Treasury on Thursday announced new sanctions targeting Iranian officials including Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council for National Security.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, held telephone talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in what the Kremlin described as “efforts to facilitate de-escalation”.

At the UN Security Council in New York, Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, invited to address the body by Washington, said “all Iranians are united” against the government in Iran.

Iran’s representative at the meeting Gholamhossein Darzi accused Washington of “exploitation of peaceful protests for geopolitical purposes.”

There were, however, indications of unrest in some areas.

The state-affiliated Tasnim news outlet reported that rioters set fire to a local education office in Falavarjan County, in central Isfahan Province, on Thursday.

An elderly resident of a town in Iran’s northwestern region, where many Kurdish Iranians live and which has been the focus for many of the biggest flare-ups, said sporadic protests had continued, though not as intensely.

Describing violence earlier in the protests, she said: “I have not seen scenes like that before.”

The state-owned Press TV cited Iran’s police chief as saying calm had been restored across the country.

Tasnim news also reported what it described as the arrest of a large number of leaders of recent riots in the western province of Kermanshah, and the arrest of five people accused of vandalising a gas station and a base belonging to the Basij in the southeastern city of Kerman.