Friends in Tehran tell me they've never seen anything like it, writes David Patrikarakos. This revolt is momentous. Yet from Starmer and the BBC, near silence...

  The videos do not stop. They come in waves, minute after minute. Iranians marching, in their hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands. Streets choked with people. Men and women side by side. Faces uncovered. Voices raised. Without fear – and with little left to lose.

This is not 2023. It is not 'Woman, Life, Freedom', noble though that revolt was. Then, the anger still focused on issues. The hijab. Police violence. Daily humiliation. Before that, it was the economy, rigged elections. Protests centred on the thin hope that the system could be, if not reformed, at least bent a little. 

That illusion is dead. This uprising is different. It is not about reform but rupture. It is about ending, after almost 50 years, the Islamic Republic. 'Death to Khamenei!' the crowds roar – the ageing ayatollah who leads Iran. The phrasing matters. For decades, the regime drilled its people to chant, 'Death to America' and 'Death to Britain'.

Now the curse is turned inward, aimed at the man who sits at the centre of the diseased state. The very language of the regime has been weaponised against it. What marks this moment out is scale. Footage verified by open-source analysts shows unrest across dozens of cities: Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Ahvaz.

The protests cut across regions, classes and ethnic lines. Kurdish towns. Arab provinces. Azeri cities. Persian heartlands. In multiple locations, crowds have moved beyond slogans to target regime symbols directly, including Basij bases and Revolutionary Guard sites. 

And then there is the other chant. The one the clerics fear most. 'Zendeh bad Pahlavi!' Long live Pahlavi. Long live the late shah's son, 65-year-old Reza Pahlavi, who sits in exile in Washington DC, and who for many Iranians is the king over the water.

This is not sentimentality. It is a statement of intent. A refusal to accept the lie that Iran's history began in 1979. The state still has the guns. But fear is shifting sides.

Over fifty years ago, my maternal family fled Iran as Islamist fascism took hold. Now, perhaps, it is finally losing its grip. Friends on the ground were sceptical at first. They have been betrayed too often to believe easily. But now they are starting to believe. 'Maybe this time, dear David...' writes a friend in Tehran. 'I have never seen anything like this.'

An old woman, her face split open, blood streaming down her cheeks, was filmed walking through Tehran: 'I am not afraid to die,' she says. 'I have been dead for forty-seven years.' Life under the Islamic Republic, she tells us, has already killed her.

I have seen footage of unarmed protesters marching toward the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard. No weapons. No cover. No panic. Just Iranians who have had enough – moving forward, reclaiming what is theirs.

The Guard is the regime's killing arm. Sadistic. Corrupt. Steeped in blood from Tehran to Damascus. To walk towards it empty-handed is a statement of contempt. The regime's response reeks of panic. It has shut down the internet, throttled mobile and messaging apps. Revolutionary Guard units have been called back from regional deployments and flooded into major cities.

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