What to know about the protests shaking Iran as government shuts down internet and phone networks

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Nationwide protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic's ailing economy are putting new pressure on its theocracy as it has shut down the internet and telephone networks.

Tehran is still reeling from a 12-day war launched by Israel in June that saw the United States bomb nuclear sites in Iran. Economic pressure, which has intensified since September when the United Nations reimposed sanctions on the country over its atomic program, has sent Iran's rial currency into a free fall, now trading at over 1.4 million to $1.

Meanwhile, Iran's self-described “Axis of Resistance” — a coalition of countries and militant groups backed by Tehran — has been decimated since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.

A threat by U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters” the U.S. “will come to their rescue," has taken on new meaning after American troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran.

“We're watching it very closely,” Trump said Sunday. “If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they're going to get hit very hard by the United States.”

Here's what to know about the protests and the challenges facing Iran's government.

More than 390 protests have taken place across all of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported Friday. The death toll had reached at least 42, it added, with more than 2,270 arrests. The group relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting and has been accurate in past unrest.

Understanding the scale of the protests has been difficult. Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations. Online videos offer only brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire. Journalists in general in Iran also face limits on reporting such as requiring permission to travel around the country, as well as the threat of harassment or arrest by authorities. The internet shutdown has further complicated the situation.

But the protests do not appear to be stopping, even after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said “rioters must be put in their place.”

The collapse of the rial has led to a widening economic crisis in Iran. Prices are up on meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table. The nation has been struggling with an annual inflation rate of some 40%.

In December, Iran introduced a new pricing tier for its nationally subsidized gasoline, raising the price of some of the world’s cheapest gas and further pressuring the population. Tehran may seek steeper price increases in the future, as the government now will review prices every three months. Meanwhile, food prizes are expected to spike after Iran’s Central Bank in recent days ended a preferential, subsidized dollar-rial exchange rate for all products except medicine and wheat.

The protests began in late December with merchants in Tehran before spreading. While initially focused on economic issues, the demonstrations soon saw protesters chanting anti-government statements as well. Anger has been simmering over the years, particularly after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody that triggered nationwide demonstrations.

Iran's “Axis of Resistance," which grew in prominence in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is reeling.

Israel has crushed Hamas in the devastating war in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, has seen its top leadership killed by Israel and has been struggling since. A lightning offensive in December 2024 overthrew Iran’s longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria, President Bashar Assad, after years of war there. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels also have been pounded by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes.

China meanwhile has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, but hasn't provided overt military support. Neither has Russia, which has relied on Iranian drones in its war on Ukraine.

Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials have increasingly threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran had been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels prior to the U.S. attack in June, making it the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.

Tehran also increasingly cut back its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, as tensions increased over its nuclear program in recent years. The IAEA's director-general has warned Iran could build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program.

U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”

Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. But there's been no significant talks in the months since the June war.

Iran decades ago was one of the United States’ top allies in the Mideast under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.

But in January 1979, the shah fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. Then came the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran’s theocratic government.

Later that year, university students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed.

During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein. During that conflict, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea as part of the so-called “Tanker War,” and later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the U.S. military said it mistook for a warplane.

Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since. Relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran greatly limit its program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Mideast that intensified after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media shows protesters dancing and cheering around a bonfire as they take to the streets despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world, in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026.(UGC via AP)

FILE -A student looks at Iran's domestically built centrifuges in an exhibition of the country's nuclear achievements, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - An Iranian security official in protective clothing walks through part of the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the Iranian city of Isfahan, on March 30, 2005. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - A customer shops at a supermarket at a shopping mall in northern Tehran, on Sept. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - Current and pre-revolution Iranian banknotes are displayed by a street money exchanger at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, on Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - People cross the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) street in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - Protesters march on a bridge in Tehran, Iran, on Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP, File)

People wave national flags during a ceremony commemorating the death anniversary of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor was just days away from returning home to her husband and two children when a drone strike at a command center in Kuwait killed her and five other U.S. service members.

“She was almost home,” her husband, Joey Amor, said from their home in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, on Tuesday. “You don’t go to Kuwait thinking something’s going to happen, and for her to be one of the first – it hurts.”

Amor was one of four U.S. soldiers killed in the Iran war on Sunday and identified Tuesday by the Pentagon; two soldiers haven't yet been publicly identified. The members of the Army Reserve worked in logistics and kept troops supplied with food and equipment.

They died just one day after the U.S. and Israel launched its military campaign against Iran. Iran responded by launching missiles and drones against Israel and several Gulf Arab states that host U.S. armed forces.

Those killed also included Capt. Cody Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; and Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, lowa, who was posthumously promoted from specialist. No other names were released.

“These men and women all bravely volunteered to defend our country, and their sacrifice will never be forgotten,” Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll said.

All were assigned to the 103rd Sustainment Command, which provides food, fuel, water and ammunition, transport equipment and supplies.

“Sadly, there will likely be more, before it ends. That’s the way it is,” President Donald Trump said of deaths.

Coady had just told his father last week that he had been recommended for a promotion from specialist to sergeant, a rank he received posthumously.

He was one of the youngest people in his class but seemed to impress his instructors, his father Andrew Coady said Tuesday.

“He was very good at what he did," he said.

Coady trained as an information technology specialist with the Army Reserves and was studying cybersecurity at Drake University in Des Moines. He was taking online classes while in Kuwait and wanted to become an officer.

“I still don’t fully think it’s real,” his sister Keira Coady said. “I just remember all of our conversations about what he was going to do when he came back.”

Amor, 39, was an avid gardener who enjoyed making salsa from the peppers and tomatoes in her garden with her son, a senior in high school. She also enjoyed rollerblading and bicycling with her fourth-grade daughter.

A week before the drone attack, Amor was moved off-base to a shipping container-style building that had no defenses, Joey Amor said.

“They were dispersing because they were in fear that the base they were on was going to get attacked and they felt it was safer in smaller groups in separate places,” he said.

He last spoke to her about two hours before she was killed. He said she was working long shifts and they had been messaging about her tripping and falling the night before.

“She just never responded in the morning,” he said.

Khork was very patriotic and drawn from a young age to serving the U.S., his family said in a statement Tuesday.

He enlisted in the Army Reserve and joined Florida Southern College’s ROTC program.

“That commitment helped shape the course of his life and reflected the deep sense of duty that was always at the core of who he was,” said his mother, Donna Burhans, father, James Khork, and stepmother, Stacey Khork, in a statement.

Khork also loved history and had a degree in political science.

His family described him as “the life of the party, known for his infectious spirit, generous heart, and deep care for those who served alongside him and for everyone blessed to know him.”

One of Khork’s friends, Abbas Jaffer, posted on Facebook on Monday that he had lost the best person he had ever known.

“My best friend, best man, and brother gave his life defending our country overseas,” Jaffer said. Khork and Jaffer had been friends for more than 16 years.

Tietjens lived with his family in the Washington Terrace mobile home park in the Omaha suburb of Bellevue, Nebraska. He was married with a son, according to a Facebook page.

Tietjens earned a black belt in Philippine Combatives and Taekwondo and was “an instructor who gave his time, discipline, and leadership to others,” the Philippine Martial Arts Alliance said in a Facebook post.

On the mat and as a soldier, “he carried the same values: honor, discipline, service, and commitment to others,” the organization said.

Nebraska Gov. Gov. Pillen paid tribute to the family Tuesday.

“Noah stepped up to serve and defend the American people from foreign enemies around the world — a sacrifice we must never forget," he wrote.

“We are holding the Tietjens family close in our hearts during this unbelievably difficult time and will keep them in our prayers," he said.

Boone contributed from Boise, Idaho, and Toropin from Washington. Associated Press reporters Sarah Raza in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Ed White in Detroit; Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska; David Fischer in Miami and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.

Keira Coady talks about her brother, Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa, outside her home, Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in West Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Andrew Coady and his daughter Keira, right, talk about his son, Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa, outside their home, Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in West Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Keira Coady holds a photo of her brother, Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa, outside her home, Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in West Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Keira Coady talks about her brother, Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa, outside her home, Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in West Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

This image provided by U.S. Central Command shows aircraft on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) that are operating in support of the war in Iran, on Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (U.S. Navy via AP)