Lawfare Daily: Iran Protests and Internet Shutdown
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
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Summary
Information about the recent protests in Iran and the regime's brutal crackdown are only starting to come to light, having been severely limited by the internet shutdown over the past few weeks. The picture that is emerging is horrifying: Thousands and possibly tens of thousands have been killed by regime security forces. In this episode, Lawfare Public Service Fellow Ariane Tabatabai talks to Nate Swanson and Iria Puyosa of the Atlantic Council to make sense of what has been going on in Iran and the U.S. response.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | People living in different regions of the country or even in the same cities, but in the different areas of the city can communicate with the shoulder. |
| 0:09.0 | They don't know what is happening in other areas that made more difficult to coordinate protests or even to protect their service from police, security, repression. |
| 0:20.0 | So that is what is happening now in Iran. |
| 0:24.6 | It's the Lawfare podcast. |
| 0:26.0 | I'm Ariane Tabatabai, Public Service Fellow here at Lawfare, |
| 0:29.1 | with Nate Swanson, senior fellow and director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic |
| 0:33.6 | Council, and Aria Puyosa, Senior Research Fellow, |
| 0:36.9 | and the Democracy and Tech Initiative, also at the Atlantic Council. Area Puyosa Senior Research Fellow and the Democracy and Tech Initiative, |
| 0:38.5 | also at the Atlantic Council. This is different. You know, the government's inability to meet the |
| 0:45.5 | needs of some people and then people who are affiliated are slightly outside the system now recognizing |
| 0:51.8 | that reform is basically impossible under the current |
| 0:55.4 | scenario. Today, we're talking about the protests in Iran, the brutal regime crackdown during |
| 1:01.1 | their lengthy internet shutdown and the U.S. response to it. We're still learning what happened |
| 1:06.9 | in Iran during the very extensive shutdown, and the picture that's emerging right now |
| 1:12.3 | is absolutely horrifying. Since the protest started on December the 28th, thousands of people, |
| 1:18.5 | with estimates ranging from about 10,000 to 30,000 people have been killed. These numbers, it's |
| 1:25.3 | important to highlight, surpass the Tiananmen Square massacre. |
| 1:30.5 | So, Nate, I want to start with you and ask you to do a little bit of a sit rep. Tell us about |
| 1:36.1 | these protests. How did it all start? Yeah, thanks, Ari. Thanks for having me on. Look, I mean, |
| 1:41.2 | I think you kind of can look at these protests in like three like unique phases here, right? So first you kind of had just the purely what was happening |
| 1:49.1 | inside Iran, right? So they started on the 28th over, you know, they were sparked by economic |
| 1:53.5 | protests, you know, the changing and the currency and the, and, you know, you had the different |
... |
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