PARIS, Jan 10 (AFP): Major Iranian cities were gripped overnight by new mass rallies denouncing the Islamic republic, as the son of the ousted shah urged protesters on Saturday to plan to seize city centres.
The two weeks of protests have posed one of the biggest challenges to the theocratic authorities who have ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, although supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has expressed defiance and blamed the United States.
Following the movement's largest protests yet on Thursday, new demonstrations took place late Friday, according to images verified by AFP and other videos published on social media.
This was despite an internet shutdown imposed by the authorities, with monitor Netblocks saying early Saturday that "metrics show the nationwide internet blackout remains in place at 36 hours".
In Tehran's Saadatabad district, people banged pots and chanted anti-government slogans including "death to Khamenei" as cars honked in support, a video verified by AFP showed.
Other images disseminated on social media and by Persian-language television channels based outside Iran showed similar large protests elsewhere in the capital, as well as in the eastern city of Mashhad, Tabriz in the north and the holy city of Qom.
In the western city of Hamedan, a man was shown waving a shah-era Iranian flag featuring the lion and the sun amid fires and people dancing.
In the Pounak district of northern Iran, people were shown dancing round a fire in the middle of a highway, while in the Vakilabad district of Mashhad, a city home to one of the holiest shrines in Shiite Islam, people marched down an avenue chanting "death to Khamenei". It was not possible to immediately verify the videos.
Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of Iran's ousted shah, hailed the "magnificent" turnout on Friday and urged Iranians to stage more targeted protests this Saturday and Sunday.
"Our goal is no longer just to take to the streets. The goal is to prepare to seize and hold city centres," Pahlavi said in a video message on social media.
Pahlavi, whose father Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was ousted by the 1979 revolution and died in 1980, added he was also "preparing to return to my homeland" at a time that he believed was "very near".
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump issued a new warning to Iran's leaders on Friday as videos showed anti-government protests raging across the country, and authorities blacked out the internet to curb growing unrest.
Rights groups have documented dozens of deaths of protesters in nearly two weeks and, with Iranian state TV showing clashes and fires, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that several police officers had been killed overnight.
Trump, who bombed Iran last summer and warned Tehran last week the U.S. could come to the protesters' aid issued another warning on Friday, saying: "You better not start shooting because we'll start shooting too."
"I just hope the protesters in Iran are going to be safe, because that's a very dangerous place right now," he added.
The protests pose the biggest internal challenge in at least three years to Iran's clerical rulers, who look more vulnerable than during past bouts of unrest amid a dire economic situation and after last year's war with Israel and the United States.
