The protests in Iran in January were suppressed by the regime – now many are hoping for the USA. Image: AP UGC
After the Iranian regime brutally suppressed the protests at the beginning of January, the USA is now building up a military threat. A young Iranian woman explains to Watson why many people hope for Trump.
January 29, 2026, 7:55 p.mJanuary 29, 2026, 8:08 p.m
Trigger warning
This text describes violence, death and repression. The basis is voice messages from a conversation partner in Tehran as well as publicly available reports. Contact with the woman took place via an encrypted communication channel. Individual incidents she described cannot currently be independently verified by Watson.
Since the protests were suppressed at the beginning of January, things have become quieter on the streets of Iran. However, many believe it is the calm before the storm.
Because the political situation remains tense: US President Donald Trump has been building a military threat in front of Iran since Thursday – and is reportedly considering targeted military strikes intended to increase pressure on the mullahs’ regime and trigger new protests.
In the West, this is primarily causing concerns about escalation.
In Iran it triggers something else: hope.
watson spoke to a young woman from Tehran who is hoping for a US attack. She explains why many people got to this point in the first place: out of desperation.
The nights that changed everything
Parisa’s* plane landed on the evening of January 8th, just as protests were flaring across the country. She had just returned from visiting friends in Tehran. Even from the airport she heard what was happening in the city:
“I heard gunshots for hours. All the time.”
When she was finally able to make her way home later, the city seemed like a war zone to her: “I saw burned buses everywhere, burned trash cans and bullet casings scattered all over the street.” And then that smell: tear gas that hung in the air hours later, burning the skin and irritating the eyes.
“Everything was burning”: Pictures from Tehran from January 8th. Image: AP/Iran state TV
She quickly noticed that this time something was different than the previous protests. What she didn’t know at the time was that the next day she would hear the shooting going on for hours.
These shootings are nothing new for her, says Parisa. She also experienced nights like this during previous waves of protests. Something else was new: that so many people died. In just two days.
The human rights organization Amnesty later described the events of January 8th and 9th as a “protest massacre”.
Propaganda with death figures
According to her own statements, Parisa has been present at practically all waves of protests since 2017. She knows the pattern when security guards show up: run, don’t get into dead ends, constantly check to see if you’re being followed. But things came to a head during this protest – including by snipers, she says.
She talks about a scene from her environment: a girl was riding a motorcycle with her father. “They hit him in the back of the head. A shot in the head,” she says. Research by international media shows that security forces fired live ammunition into crowds in several cities during the January protests. Videos also show snipers positioned on roofs.
Video: Watson/Lucas Zollinger
The extent of the brutality can also be seen in numbers: an Iranian official told Reuters there were at least 5,000 “verified” deaths, including around 500 security forces. Parisa thinks this is propaganda and points to media and NGO estimates of well over 30,000 deaths. “The regime obviously wants to prevent the world from finding out about it at all costs.” Or your own population.
One is causing a stir in Iran videowhich is currently circulating among the population. It shows a father in Tehran walking past lined up body bags for 12 minutes and calling out his son’s name. But even such images are dismissed by the regime as propaganda and lies.
But people no longer believed the regime; their eyes had been opened, says Parisa. “The Iranian people are more united than ever.” There used to be people who believed that the regime could reform. This time it is different. It is clear to many: the system has to go.
This also has to do with Rasht.
Horror scenes in Rasht
In Rasht, the capital of the Iranian province of Gilan with around 700,000 inhabitants, people also took to the streets on January 8th to protest for the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime.
What followed became a horrific scene of this uprising for many: a major fire broke out in the historic bazaar, where many protesters were hiding from the security forces. Reports and reconstructions by Western media suggest that Iranian security forces may have fired on people trying to escape the fire, smoke and crowds – how many died is unclear. Media reports up to tens of thousands.
Parisa herself has a boyfriend in Rasht. His house is close to the bazaar. “He told me that two weeks later he could still smell the burning flesh of people. “That he will never forget the smell,” says Parisa.
Video: Watson/Lucas Zollinger
She describes the version circulating around her: Protesters flee, are ambushed in the bazaar, and the fire breaks out. Anyone who tries to escape will be shot at. In Rasht, many believed that security forces had driven people into the flames and left them to die. Watson cannot independently verify this story either.
After the protests came the funerals
Since these escalations, the protests have disappeared from the streets. “There are no active protests right now,” she says. Not because it’s over. But because they have shifted.
Many people also have to bury their relatives. “Everyone I know knows someone who died during these protests,” says Parisa. At the same time, the fate of many others is still unknown. Parisa herself speaks of a friend who was taken to prison. She doesn’t know whether he’s still alive. There is a fear circulating around them that families would first be asked to pay – and then later receive a corpse instead of being released.
Since the protest was suppressed, Parisa has no longer had a normal everyday life. “The streets are mostly empty because people are afraid,” she says. But: “Everywhere I go, people curse this regime,” she says. Then there are the prices: they rise again “every few days”. Some have no more hope. Others tried to spread hope.
The hope of many Iranians is currently based on Trump.
Hope and cry for help
Trump publicly encouraged the Iranian protesters in mid-January and posted: “Help is on the way.”
There are now increasing signs that military intervention by the USA could be possible. Trump has already sent an aircraft carrier with 90 fighter jets on board to the Middle East, and an armada of US warships is on its way to the region.
Parisa says: That’s exactly why many hope. She describes a balance of power that she experiences as hopeless: military weapons against civilians with stones. “We Iranians are hostages of this regime. They are massacring us – of course we need help,” she says. If no other country helps, people will either collapse due to poverty at some point – or the regime will continue to kill them.
The young woman is convinced that an attack would keep the regime busy, withdraw forces, loosen control – and then, she believes, the moment could come when the streets become full again and the system collapses.
But she also fears the backlash: the regime could strike back internally and bomb civilian residential areas because it is coming under pressure from outside.
The fact that Parisa is hoping for a US strike despite this possible scenario is not a longing for war, but a desperate search for a way out.
*(name changed by the editors)