Protests resurging across Iranian universities as families mourn massacre victims
Mourners gather at Behesht Zahra Cemetery to honor protesters killed during anti-government demonstrations, on February 18, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. . (Photo by Contributor/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Iranian students from several universities across the country continued protesting on Monday against the Islamic Republic’s regime for the third-consecutive day since Saturday, when schools reopened for the second semester.
Social media videos verified by ABC News show hundreds of students in Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan shouting slogans, including “Death to Khamenei” and “Woman, Life, Freedom/Iranian Republic,” targeting Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, and pushing for a regime change.
The protests appear to be the most significant to spread since the Iranian regime’s massacre across the country, in which more than 7,000 people were killed, as the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a U.S.-based group, reported earlier this month. ABC News cannot independently verify the group’s figures.
Groups of students also chanted “Pahlavi will return,” calling for the return of Reza Pahlavi, the U.S.-based son of the former monarch of the country. Pahlavi’s call for protest in early January, 10 days after the unrest started in Tehran, escalated the nationwide protests just before the regime’s crackdown on the protesters.
Pictures of the victims of the January protests have been held by protesting students in universities. A verified video shows students gathering in the Foreign Languages department at the University of Tehran, with some holding pictures of Raha Bohlouli, a student of Italian language and literature at this school who was said to have been killed during the protests.
In a protest at Tehran’s Amirkabir University on Sunday, protesting students were confronted by pro-regime Basiji students who tried to disrupt their gathering.
Following the protests, some students of Tehran’s renown Sharif University who participated received a text message on Monday stating that they have been banned from getting into the university, the semi-official Asriran News Agency reported.
The current round of students’ protests appeared to be gathering momentum as families of thousands of the victims of January’s massacres have recently been holding 40th-day ceremonies in remembrance of their loved ones.
In Iran, one of the significant commemoration ceremonies after someone’s death is held on the 40th day after the burial, when loved ones gather to reflect on the memories of the departed. These ceremonies have traditionally been seen as potential hubs for more protests over the past decades, as the pain and loss of the families have the potential to stir anger and a demand for justice for those killed by the regime.
Dance of defiance
With the broad scope of the Islamic Republic regime’s massacre across the country, thousands of families are still mourning the loss of their loved ones. Iranian cemeteries, holy shrines and mosques — which normally are venues for the 40th-day ceremonies — have turned into scenes of the most extraordinary ways of mourning in the country, as victims’ families have been dancing to mourn as a sign of defiance.
Hundreds of videos circulating online from these ceremonies show parents, children, friends, wives and husbands of the victims dancing to upbeat music playing at mosques and holy shrine sites as a dramatic representation of their grief.
This is seen by many Iran watchers as an act of defiance, transforming a national collective pain into a form of resistance.
Videos show mourning women — even those from traditional and religious backgrounds — dancing in black, many of them without wearing a headscarf.
This comes as mosques and holy shrines have been important bases for the regime to spread the hardcore ideology its leaders stand by, which bans any kind of dance and music and scorns them as sins — let alone tolerating them in public or at holy sites.
The scenes have been witnessed at young victims’ commemoration ceremonies to highlight the happy life they deserved but were deprived of.
“No tears or words can express my pain,” a family member of one of the victims killed during protests in Tehran told ABC News on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“I always dreamt of dancing at his wedding,” she said. “I felt this burning pain in my chest as I was dancing by the side of his grave. My dream was taken away by a bullet.”
The remerging of the protests comes as the United States and Islamic Republic leaders are preparing for another round of talks in Geneva on Thursday to discuss a possible nuclear deal.
Greenland residents and political leaders have publicly rejected suggestions by U.S. President Donald Trump that the Arctic island could become part of the United States. Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, has emphasized that its future will be decided by its own people, with officials stating that the island is not for sale and does not wish to become American. (Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — The heads of all 27 European Union member states will gather in Brussels on Thursday for what the body is calling an “extraordinary” summit regarding the recent crisis in transatlantic relations prompted by U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland.
European leaders “will discuss recent developments in transatlantic relations and their implications for the EU and coordinate on the way forward,” a notice posted to the website of the European Council — the body made up of EU national leaders — said.
The meeting, which is scheduled for 7 p.m. local time, comes after several weeks of tensions between the U.S. and its European allies over the fate of Greenland, a self-governing part of the Kingdom of Denmark which Trump has repeatedly said — across both his first and second terms in office — that he wants to acquire for the U.S.
The issue has dominated this week’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Trump addressed the event on Wednesday, swinging between apparent threats against NATO allies over Greenland while also ruling out the use of military force to seize the massive Arctic island.
Trump described Greenland as a “piece of ice” and framed his proposed acquisition of the territory — which he several times incorrectly referred to as Iceland, though the White House denied that he misspoke — as payment for decades of U.S. contributions to NATO and European security.
Trump met with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte after his address. Later, Trump wrote on social media that the “framework of a future deal” on Greenland had been reached on Greenland.
The president said he would shelve plans to impose tariffs on eight NATO allies who deployed small numbers of troops to Greenland earlier this month — a threat that prompted fierce criticism from European leaders and raised the prospect of a transatlantic trade war.
Neither Trump nor Rutte immediately revealed the details of the purported deal. Trump told CNN that the U.S. got “everything we wanted,” while Rutte told Fox News that the issue of Greenland’s sovereignty “did not come up” in his meeting with the president.
A NATO spokesperson told ABC News that trilateral talks between the U.S., Greenland and Denmark were ongoing.
Rutte told Reuters on Thursday, “We came to this understanding that collectively as NATO, we have to step up here, including the U.S.”
Rutte said that minerals exploitation in Greenland was not discussed during his talks with Trump on Wednesday, and that specific negotiations relating to Greenland will continue between Washington, Copenhagen and Nuuk.
“You can always take Donald Trump at his word,” Rutte said. “He is the leader of the free world, and he is doing what I would love for a leader of the free world to do.”
On Thursday morning, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a statement that Copenhagen and Nuuk have been coordinating on discussions over Greenland. Denmark was in “close dialogue with NATO” and with Rutte before the latter’s meeting with Trump, she said.
“NATO is fully aware of the position of the Kingdom of Denmark. We can negotiate on everything political; security, investments, economy. But we cannot negotiate on our sovereignty,” the prime minister said.
“I have been informed that this has not been the case either. And of course, only Denmark and Greenland themselves can make decisions on issues concerning Denmark and Greenland,” Frederiksen said.
A European Council spokesperson told ABC News there had been “no change in the agenda” for Thursday’s meeting in Brussels following Trump’s announcement of a possible deal.
In a statement on the Council’s website, the body’s President Antonio Costa said that the key topics for discussions on Thursday will include “unity around the principles of international law, territorial integrity and national sovereignty” and “unity in full support and solidarity with Denmark and Greenland.”
Also to be discussed, Costa said, are a “shared transatlantic interest in peace and security in the Arctic, notably through NATO” and “concern that further tariffs would undermine relations and are incompatible with the EU-U.S. trade agreement.”
“The EU wants to continue engaging constructively with the United States on all issues of common interest,” the statement said.
A man sweeps up debris near a residential building that was hit in an airstrike in the early hours of March 27, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked off their joint military campaign against Iran in late February, urging the fall of the Islamic Republic.
“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations,” Trump said, addressing Iranians in announcing the start of “major combat operations.”
A month of unrelenting combined U.S.-Israeli strikes appears to have significantly eroded Iran’s military capabilities and killed many of its most senior leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who died alongside dozens of top Iranian officials in a series of airstrikes on his official residence in Tehran in the opening salvos of the war.
But despite Trump’s assertion that the “war has been won,” Iranian forces continue to launch attacks on Israel, regional U.S. bases and American partners across the Middle East, while commercial shipping through the strategic Strait of Hormuz remains constrained, with large numbers of cargo vessels in limbo on either side of the narrow waterway at the southern entrance to the Persian Gulf.
Trump has also asserted that there had been “complete regime change,” with the leaders the U.S. is now dealing with in recently announced negotiations “more moderate” and “much more reasonable,” the president told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl.
Trump named Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the powerful speaker of the Iranian parliament, as the direct U.S. negotiating partner, though Ghalibaf has denied the assertion.
But in Tehran, the cadre of officials – Ghalibaf among them – emerging to take the reins of power appear as committed as the slain figures they are replacing, many of them veterans of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), analysts have said.
The regime in Tehran, according to Danny Citrinowicz – the Israel Defense Forces’ former top Iran researcher, now at the Institute for National Security Studies think tank in Israel – “is weaker than it was before the conflict, but it is also more radical. The IRGC has further consolidated its influence over decision-making, eroding what little internal balance once existed within the regime.”
The war appears to have given Tehran long-term leverage over the Strait of Hormuz – a “weapon of mass disruption,” as described by Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group during an online briefing hosted by the think tank this week.
If the Islamic Republic survives the war, and its immediate aftermath by suppressing simmering anti-regime movements, its new leaders may be emboldened to retain perceived strategic advantages, chief among them control of the Strait of Hormuz, analysts who spoke to ABC News said.
That regime sentiment seems to be crystalizing. Ghalibaf, for example, told the IRNA state news agency that Iran’s strategy now rests on its control of three pillars: “missiles, the streets, and the Strait.”
Inside Iran, some sense that shift. Darius – who did not wish to use his real name for fear of reprisal – told ABC News from Tehran of a growing sentiment that “the source of legitimacy for the Islamic republic is shifting” from the clerical establishment to the IRGC.
“Now, the de facto leaders of the country are the generals in the IRGC. And they are actually running the show at the moment,” Darius said.
IRGC ascendant
The IRGC was formed shortly after the Iranian Revolution by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, ultimately emerging as the new Islamic Republic’s primary tool for projecting its ideology and influence beyond its own borders.
The IRGC entrenched and expanded its power during the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988. With its battlefield exploits and ideological zeal, the IRGC came to embody the wartime concept of “sacred defense,” Johns Hopkins University professor Vali Nasr wrote in his recent book, “Iran’s Grand Strategy.”
Observers have long considered the IRGC to be the most powerful military, political and economic institution in Iran.
Even before the most recent U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran, many experts warned that decapitation strikes or a push for regime change risked empowering the IRGC to seize the state’s other mechanisms of power – though others suggested the force had no need to openly seize control, given its de facto hold over the country.
The new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ali Khamenei, served in an elite IRGC unit during the Iran-Iraq War, and analysts have suggested his candidacy was strongly supported by the force.
Mojtaba Khamenei’s newly appointed military adviser, Mohsen Rezaei, was drawn from the senior ranks of the IRGC, as was the new secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who was selected to replace Ali Larijani when the latter was killed by Israeli airstrikes in mid-March.
Meanwhile, IRGC veteran Ghalibaf – who has reportedly long been close to Mojtaba Khamenei – remains alive and appears to be in a position of influence, one of the few top prewar officials to have survived the U.S.-Israeli campaign.
Inside Iran, some sense that shift. Darius told ABC News from Tehran of a growing sentiment that “the source of legitimacy for the Islamic republic is shifting” from the clerical establishment to the IRGC.
“Now, the de facto leaders of the country are the generals in the IRGC. And they are actually running the show at the moment,” Darius said.
Reading the ‘mosaic’
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi credited a “mosaic defense” strategy with enabling the Iranian military to launch retaliatory strikes despite the killing of so many senior military officials in the opening hours of the U.S.-Israeli campaign.
That decentralized approach also appeared to cause some tactical confusion. Araghchi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, for example, both denied Iranian responsibility for several reported Iranian drone and missile attacks in the region in the days after the war erupted.
A decapitated regime in Tehran may pose challenges to American negotiators seeking a peace deal, Citrinowicz said, telling ABC News that the killings have created a “worse” strategic situation by dispersing power.
The centralized decision-making power enjoyed by Ali Khamenei is no more, he said. “Now, how are you going to work with them? It’s going to be very hard to reach an agreement with them,” Citrinowicz said, referring to the newly emergent group of leaders.
Trump himself appeared to acknowledge a diffusion of power in Iran as a result of the American-Israeli assassination campaign. “We have nobody to talk to, and you know what, we like it that way,” the president said earlier this month.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told “Good Morning America” this week there are “fractures” within the Iranian leadership, though he would not say with whom the administration is in contact.
Yossi Kuperwasser – the former head of the IDF’s military intelligence research division – told ABC News that the emergence of hardliners “was to be expected.”
“Once you eliminate Khamenei, he’s not going to be replaced by some wishy-washy character, but somebody who is committed to the cause and the IRGC is going to be in charge,” Kuperwasser said.
But Kuperwasser also noted that figures currently touted as Iranian negotiators, such as Ghalibaf, might not live to see the end of the war. Indeed, Larijani was often noted as among the prime negotiating candidates before his killing. “I’d guess there are going to be more eliminations,” Kuperwasser said.
As the war progressed, both U.S. and Israeli officials have distanced themselves from earlier suggestions of regime change. Instead, officials refocused the strategic narrative on their ambitions to degrade Iran’s conventional military – especially ballistic missile – and nuclear programs.
These targets, according to Kuperwasser, were always the Israeli priority.
“Simultaneously, we are trying to weaken the regime so as to create the conditions that can be used by the people of Iran in order to promote something that can bring about the removal of the regime from power,” Kuperwasser said. But that will not necessarily occur in the short term, he added.
‘Missiles, the street, the strait’
Citrinowicz said that whatever structure emerges to negotiate with the Trump administration will likely be influenced toward more hardline demands by the killing of its predecessors.
On the nuclear file, too, “it goes without saying” that Tehran’s outlook will have shifted, Citrinowicz said. Before the war, Iranian leaders had already publicly committed not to pursue nuclear weapons, though Tehran was refusing to accept Trump’s demands of zero enrichment. Now, Citrinowicz said, the new Iranian leadership “might find themselves rushing toward a bomb.”
Iran also has more leverage in the Strait of Hormuz than it did before the conflict, even with the significant military degradation that the U.S. and Israel appear to have inflicted. Officials in Tehran have suggested that Iranian control over the strait – and the requirement for those transiting it to coordinate with Tehran and pay tolls – is the new baseline.
Rubio hinted at long-term disruption in the Persian Gulf last week. “Immediately after this thing ends, and we’re done with our objectives, the immediate challenge we’re going to face is an Iran that may decide that they want to set up a tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz,” Rubio said.
Hamidreza Azizi of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs think tank said during the Crisis Group briefing that Tehran will be set on a conclusive settlement, not merely a ceasefire that would allow the U.S. and Israel to rearm and resume the conflict at a later date, as was the case after the 12-day conflict in June.
“Deep inside Iran’s strategic thinking, there is an understanding that ceasefires are only a means for the United States and Israel to buy time,” Azizi said. While before the conflict, Tehran appeared willing to make concessions on the nuclear file and other issues, now Iranian leaders see an opportunity to achieve what they were unable to across years of negotiations.
The endgame, Azizi said, could be one in which Iran preserves “some sort of leverage” over the Strait of Hormuz or secures “substantial sanctions removal.”
For its part, Citrinowicz said the U.S. appears to be scrambling. “There are so many people in the U.S. that understand this regime, but the administration is behaving like it’s Venezuela. It’s crazy,” Citrinowicz said, referring to the American operation in January to seize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and support his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, as Maduro’s successor.
Last week, the U.S. delivered 15-point plan to end the war, which was widely interpreted as a blueprint for Tehran’s capitulation. Iranian demands are likewise maximalist, calling for reparations and for the U.S. to abandon its regional bases.
“Nobody’s getting their wish list,” Dalia Dassa Kaye of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations said during this week’s Crisis Group briefing.
In the meantime, the battlefield costs will rise and geopolitical implications deepen across the Middle East. “Even if this ends tomorrow,” Kaye said, the costs have already been paid. “It’s going to take years to recuperate the damage.”
“This is not something you put back in a box,” he added.
ABC News’ Desiree Adib and Somayeh Malekian contributed to this report.
Russian Police officers walk next to the entrance of a residential building on Volokolamsk Highway, where an assassination attempt on General Lieutenant Alexeyev (Alekseev) was made earlier in the morning, on February 6, 2026, in Moscow, . (Photo by Contributor/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alexeyev, a high-ranking Defense Ministry official, was shot and injured in an ambush-style attack on Friday in a residential area of Moscow, according to the Investigative Committee of Russia and state-affiliated media.
“According to investigators, on Feb. 6, 2026, in a residential building located on Volokolamskoye Highway in Moscow, an as-yet-unidentified individual fired several shots at a man and fled the scene,” Svetlana Petrenko, the committee’s spokesperson, said in Russian on the Telegram messaging app.
The victim was transported to a local hospital, Petrenko said. She did not immediately describe the extent of his injuries.
State-affiliated news outlet TASS identified the victim as Alexeyev, adding that a criminal investigation had been launched.
“Special services are currently doing their job,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said. “Of course, this has been reported to the head of state. We wish the general a speedy recovery.”
Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, claimed without evidence that Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, may be responsible for the shooting. He suggested that it may be an attempt by Ukraine to disrupt negotiations between Washington, Kyiv and Moscow.
“The regime is ready to do anything to convince its Western sponsors not to lag behind the United States in their desire to derail the process of achieving a just settlement,” Lavrov told reporters at a briefing on Friday.
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Dragana Jovanovic and Anna Sergeeva contributed to this report.
