Iran celebrates ancient fire festival ahead of Persian New Year as tensions with US loom

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — I've worked for The Associated Press as a photographer since 1999. A lot of what I cover involves either Iran's government or its relations with the West, but I also try to shoot on the streets of Tehran as well to show the world what life looks like here in my hometown.

The fire festival offers a great opportunity for that.

Known as “Chaharshanbe Souri” in Farsi, the festival comes in the hours just before the Wednesday before Nowruz, which is the Persian New Year.

To celebrate, people light bonfires, set off fireworks and send wish lanterns floating off into the night sky. Others jump over and around fires, chanting “My yellow is yours, your red is mine,” invoking the replacement of ills with warmth and energy.

The fire festival also features an Iranian version of trick-or-treating, with people going door to door and being given a holiday mix of nuts and berries, as well as buckets of water.

It's not necessarily an easy assignment though. Here in Iran, some people remain sensitive about having their photograph taken, particularly women who aren't wearing Iran's mandatory headscarf, or hijab.

Meanwhile, the joy sometimes overcomes safety concerns as smoke fills the air and fireworks explode at random overhead. There are injuries every year and sometimes deaths. I ended up having a piece of a burning firecracker land inside my left shoe. I'm OK — it just burned a hole through my sock and left a small blister.

I used a flash for some of my photos to capture people jumping through the fire, given their speed and the low light available. One picture my photo editors especially liked shows a man holding a lit firework, his face silhouetted by its bright light. Behind him, you can see the empty branches of trees in the park I shot in.

Nowruz marks the start of spring. Soon, leaves will sprout again.

See more AP photography at https://apnews.com/photography.

An Iranian woman jumps over a bonfire celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

An Iranian man jumps over a bonfire celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

An Iranian woman holds up a firework celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

An Iranian woman dances while celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Iranians dance while celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Iranians jump over a bonfire celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Iranians dance while celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

An Iranian woman jumps over a bonfire celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Iranians gather around a bonfire celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Iranians dance while celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Iranians gather around a bonfire as they light a firework celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

An Iranian woman jumps over a bonfire celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

People dance while celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

An Iranian woman releases a wishing lantern while celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

An Iranian man plays with a firework celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

An Iranian man jumps over a firework celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. Iranians celebrate their new year, or Nowruz, with arrival of the spring. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

An Iranian man plays with a firework celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

An Iranian man plays with a firework celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

An Iranian man holds up a firework celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

CAIRO (AP) — Iranians began to regain internet access on Wednesday after authorities ended a monthslong shutdown. But users said service was slow and spotty in some areas, with apps like YouTube and Instagram heavily restricted, as they were before the cutoff began during nationwide protests in January.

Authorities justified the outage as a military imperative after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Their decision to lift some restrictions this week came as negotiators appeared to be closing in on a more permanent truce. But many Iranians feared access could be cut off again at a moment's notice.

Internet tracking company Netblocks said Iran’s connectivity, which measures the ability of devices to connect to the internet, is at around 86% of capacity from before the cutoff. Internet analysis firm Kentik said internet traffic, which measures the amount of data transferred and is a good illustration of usage, was at around 40%.

Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity analyst, said there were still widespread disruptions. “It's too early to say the shutdown is over,” he wrote on X.

Iran’s roughly 90 million people have been cut off from the internet for most of 2026, one of the world’s longest and strictest national shutdowns. Young people with online careers saw their incomes evaporate. Job losses and the closure of online businesses added to the war's steep economic costs.

The cutoff made it difficult for Iranian families to communicate through months of unrest and war. At some points, phone lines were also cut off, though they were later restored.

A woman living in Tehran said that for months she was barely able to speak to her sons living abroad. She couldn't believe authorities had restored access, saying she had assumed they would find some justification to prolong the outage.

A taxi driver said service was restored but weak. He expressed hope it would improve so he could use messaging apps with family and friends. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Prices spiked during the shutdown, with residents in Tehran at times paying around $7.50 per gigabyte. Prices are back down to around $2.25 for 30 gigabytes, roughly where they were before the protests.

Even then, Iran tightly controlled access to popular social media sites, leading many to rely on virtual private networks, or VPNs. The cost of those workarounds soared during the shutdown, making them unaffordable for many as the economy was battered.

Businesses have started reappearing online, announcing their return with posts on sites like Instagram and Telegram.

A gamer and tech influencer in the central city of Isfahan said the shutdown had caused him to lose a lot of his audience on YouTube and Instagram, where he had spent years building up a large following.

“All my views and interactions are way down. I’ve been erased from the algorithm,” he said in a voice note sent by WhatsApp, adding that his internet connection was still slower than before the shutdown.

“The situation is such that many content producers have had their income reduced to zero, have moved on to other jobs, or have been forced to sell their equipment to survive,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Iranian authorities first shut down the internet in January during mass anti-government protests that were eventually stamped out in a violent crackdown. Thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands detained.

That cutoff was just starting to ease when the government imposed a complete internet blackout after the start of the war, when U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader and other top officials.

The government faced criticism for the prolonged shutdown, which caused even more harm to an economy devastated by inflation, strikes on key industries and a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports.

The internet cutoff cost an estimated $30-40 million daily, with indirect losses likely twice that much, a member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Afshin Kolahi, told a local newspaper last month. About 10 million people have jobs that depend on internet connectivity, according to Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi.

Iranians still had access to a national net, but that has a far narrower reach, and users complained of poor service and heavy censorship. Senior government officials are given SIM cards granting them access to the global internet. Under pressure, the government expanded access to the SIM cards to some professions during the shutdown.

A woman checks her smartphone while sitting on a bench along a sidewalk in northern Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)