Tehran Students Break Barricades, Take to the Streets Escalating Anti-Regime Protests

By Pamela Geller | February 21, 2026

Iranian protests January 2026. Screengrab via Youtube

Tehran’s university students have poured out of their campuses and into the streets for the first time since the massacre — and what they are chanting marks a seismic shift. Long regarded as the most left-leaning demographic in Iran, students are no longer rallying around vague slogans like “death to the dictator.” Instead, massive crowds are openly denouncing leftism and chanting “Javid Shah,” signaling a dramatic ideological turn. This is not symbolic nuance — it is a profound evolution.

When the country’s leftist intellectual youth move from abstract dissent to explicitly rejecting the clerical regime and invoking Iran’s pre-revolutionary past, it reshapes the political landscape. Crowds at Tehran’s universities are now chanting: “A lifetime of crimes, death to this clerical regime.” The significance is enormous — a generational rupture unfolding in real time.

There are ongoing large-scale anti-government protests and student activism in Iran right now:

• National protests have continued since late December 2025. Iran has seen widespread demonstrations across multiple cities, including Tehran, over economic hardship, political repression, and opposition to the Islamic Republic. These protests have involved workers, retirees, bazaar merchants, and other groups alongside students.

• Students from multiple universities have participated in protests. Students from Tehran’s major institutions (including Amirkabir, Beheshti, Sharif, and others) have joined rallies and strikes related to the nationwide unrest.

• Slogans reported from these protests are overwhelmingly anti-regime. Many chants include “Death to the Dictator,” “Death to Khamenei,” “We are all together,” and calls for the current system to be changed.

• Pro-Pahlavi chants have been reported but are not universally confirmed on the ground. Some outlets documented footage of protests where protesters (including some students) have invoked the name of the former monarchy or expressed nostalgia for pre-1979 Iran. However, such reporting has also been met with scrutiny and claims of manipulation, and it is not yet established as a broad or dominant trend across all student protests.

• The government has not “lost control”; security forces continue crackdowns, including mass arrests and repression of demonstrators. Independent rights groups report thousands of arrests and ongoing security operations.

In summary, students and many Iranians are protesting in the streets and on university campuses as part of a broader anti-regime movement, often chanting explicitly against the clerical leadership and calling for major political change. That does reflect significant discontent among youth and academics, but the situation remains fluid, contested, and subject to differing interpretations and narratives from inside and outside Iran.

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