The streets are full of blood' Inside Iran's anti-regime protests

Sarah felt she had little left to lose. A 50-year-old entrepreneur in Tehran, she watched as prices soared higher while her freedoms shrank each year.

- By Deepa Parent and William Christou

So, when protesters started gathering in the high-end Andarzgoo neighbourhood of Tehran last Saturday evening, she was quick to join them.

In a video sent to the Guardian via her cousin who lives abroad, people walk through the street, joyous, despite a halo of teargas hanging over their heads. The crowd was mixed, with families, elderly people and men walking side by side. The mood was calm, until security forces approached, raised their assault rifles and began to shoot at the unarmed protesters at close range.

The next video she sent was hurried.

"Shameless!" she repeated again and again as she drove away, the crackle of gunshots audible as people hurry past.

Last Thursday, Iran went dark.

Authorities shut down the internet and the ability to call abroad, cutting the country off from the rest of the world.

The government's rhetoric, initially conciliatory, quickly changed. Gone were the offers of dialogue, replaced by threats of death sentences for protesters, who the government accused of being backed by Israel and the US.

What happened next was documented in grainy videos and panicked messages ferried out of the country by activists who managed to grab a Starlink connection before GPS scrambling shut their line down.

Last week, large crowds marched in cities across the country each night, chanting "Death to the dictator", a reference to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and for the return of the Pahlavi dynasty, which ruled Iran before the 1979 revolution.