The chickens are restless in Iran.

Video footage verified and geolocated by multiple mainstream international media outlets showed large street protests in multiple cities, including the capital, where demonstrators set up road blocks and lit fires late into Thursday evening with more possible on Friday.

Witnesses described chaotic scenes and variegated demographics. Protesters, eyewitnesses told The New York Times, were “men and women, young and old.”

The demonstrations, which began late last month when the local currency abruptly plunged to a new record low, presaging more inflation for a populace already plagued by economic hardship, are entering in their second week, and the regime’s options are limited.

Dozens are already dead, and Donald Trump’s threatened to intervene militarily if the regime’s domestic security apparatus resorts to a 2019-style crackdown. It’s fair to say such threats appear eminently credible, certainly compared to how they might’ve been viewed by the regime prior to America’s bombing of the country’s nuclear sites last June.

Late Thursday, Trump amplified a (probably dubious) YouTube video claiming protesters had “taken control” of Mashhad after regime forces fled. Although Mashhad has indeed seen large demonstrations, there’s no evidence as of this writing to suggest protesters ran the government out of town.

However, Reuters did publish a video showing citizens in Mashhad drawing and quartering an Iranian flag. In addition to being the country’s second-largest city, Mashhad’s home to The Imam Reza Shrine. It’s also Ali Khamenei’s birthplace. CNN was able to verify additional footage from the city showing “large crowds marching along a highway.”

In Tehran, the protesters shouted “Death to Khamenei” and “Freedom, freedom!” among other anti-government slogans. At least one government building in the capital was set ablaze, along with cars and debris. The Times verified a video showing Kaj Square on fire, the flames framing scores of teeming demonstrators.

The regime cut the internet, as it’s wont to do. The figure below’s from Georgia Tech’s Internet Outage Detection and Analysis database, a project which tracks large-scale internet outages.

As you can see, Iran went dark at 7:30 PM local time on Thursday evening.

Hours earlier, exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi exhorted Iranians to seize the moment. “Great nation of Iran, the eyes of the world are upon you,” the Shah’s son declared. “Take to the streets and, as a united front, shout your demands.”

He then threatened the regime. “Donald Trump [is] closely watching you,” he said, tagging Trump’s “X” handle. “Suppression of the people will not go unanswered.” Later, he said Iranians should gather again on Friday “and make the crowd even larger so that the regime’s repressive power becomes even weaker.”

Earlier this week, Pahlavi showed up on Sean Hannity to reiterate that he (Pahlavi, not Sean) is ready to “step in” should the regime fall. Betting market odds on Khamenei’s ouster spiked on Polymarket and Kalshi introduced a contract.

Although reports of the regime’s imminent fall are probably exaggerated, the crowds on Thursday in some locales were large enough that security personnel appeared to simply back off rather than risk being overrun.

The Times cited an unnamed senior government official in Tehran who said his colleagues were frantically “calling and texting one another,” concerned that the regime had no credible plan to “contain the avalanche” short of calling in the IRGC.

Khamenei blamed Trump. “There are some agitators who want to please the American president by destroying public property,” he said. “The Islamic Republic came to power through the blood of hundreds of thousands of noble human beings and will not back down in the face of those who are looking to destroy us.”