Holly Dagres

Death to Khamenei.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been in power for 37 years.

Calling for his death publicly is a very dangerous thing to do in Iran.

Can I clarify?

You're saying that saying death to Khamenei for you growing up was seen as something you couldn't do because you could be killed for it.

So did you at any point start hearing, did you all hear gunfire?

Since the protests started in the last days of 2025, the Iranian government has used its security forces to stop the unrest.

The violence has worked.

The streets of Iran are mostly quiet.

But the cost paid by demonstrators lingers.

The Iranian government says at least 5,000 people have been killed since the protests started.

U.S.-based human rights activist News Agency reports more than 25,000 people have been arrested.

NPR has not been able to independently confirm these numbers.

How did this happen?

On January 14th, I called up two experts on modern Iran, Ali Alfone and Hali Dagres, to ask them three central questions.

What were the conditions that brought about the current uprising in Iran?

How are these protests different from past ones?

And how should the United States and its allies respond?

We try to answer those questions on this episode of ThruLine from NPR.

To start this episode, we need to go over how this current Iranian government, the Islamic Republic, came to power.