World
Iran's young voters navigate presidential race shaped by 2022 clashes
- For young voters in Iran, the memories of the 2022 clashes against rulers have shaped the upcoming presidential race.
- All six candidates have targeted youth voters through social media, recognizing their role in Iran’s political future.
- The memory of the 2022 protests continues to influence Iranian youth, shaping their outlook on governance and political participation.
Atousa joined angry protests against Iran’s rulers in 2022 that loyalists like Reza helped crush. Two years on, the two young Iranians’ political views remain at odds, reflecting a rift that will shape the outcome of presidential elections this week.
Now 22, Atousa says she will abstain from voting in Friday’s ballot to choose a successor to Ebrahim Raisi after his death in a helicopter crash, regarding the exercise with derision.
But Reza, 26, a religiously devout member of the hardline Basij militia, intends to vote, a contrasting view of the worth of the election that underscores the division in Iran between supporters and opponents of the 45-year-old Islamic Republic.
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All six candidates – five hardliners and a low-key moderate approved by a hardline watchdog body – have been wooing youthful voters in speeches and campaign messages, using social media to reach the 60% of the 85 million population aged under 30.
People light a fire during a protest over the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who died after being arrested by the Islamic republic’s “morality police”, in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 21, 2022. (West Asia News Agency)
“This election, like all elections in Iran, is a circus. Why should I vote when I want the regime to be toppled?,” Atousa told Reuters. She declined to be identified by her full name for security reasons.
“Even if it was a free and fair election and if all candidates could enter the race, the president in Iran has no power,” she said.
The hashtag #ElectionCircus has been widely posted on social media platform X by Iranians in the past few weeks, while some Iranians at home and abroad have called for an election boycott.
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Under Iran’s clerical system, the elected president runs the government day-to-day but his powers are circumscribed by those of the hardline supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last word on top issues such as nuclear and foreign policy.
‘RELIGIOUS DUTY TO VOTE’
Like many women and young Iranians, Atousa joined protests in 2022 sparked by the death of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, in police custody, following her arrest for allegedly violating Iran’s mandatory Islamic dress code.
The unrest spiraled into the biggest show of opposition to Iran’s clerical rulers in years.
Atousa, then a student, was arrested during the protests and her dream of becoming an architect was shattered when she was expelled from university as a punishment for participating in the demonstrations.
The Basij, a plain-clothes arm of the elite Revolutionary Guards, deployed alongside uniformed security during the 2022 unrest and helped suppress demonstrations with deadly force.
Over 500 people including 71 minors were killed in the protests, hundreds injured and thousands arrested in unrest that was eventually crushed by security forces, rights groups said.
Iran carried out seven executions linked to the unrest. Authorities have not given any official estimated death toll, but said dozens of security forces were killed in “riots”.
An Iranian pro-government woman holds the Iranian flag during a rally against the recent protest gatherings in Iran, after the Friday prayer ceremony in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 23, 2022. (Majid Asgaripour/West Asia News Agency)
“I will sacrifice my life for the leader and the Islamic Republic. It is my religious duty to vote. My participation will strengthen the Nezam (system),” said Reza, from the low-income Nazi Abad district in south Tehran.
Reza said he will support a hardline candidate who champions Khamenei’s “resistance economy”, a phrase meaning economic self-sufficiency, strengthening trade ties with regional neighbors and improving economic interaction with China and Russia.
The economy is beset by mismanagement, state corruption and sanctions reimposed since 2018 after the U.S. ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six world powers.
Reza and Atousa, both born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, have regrets about the 2022 demonstrations, albeit for different reasons.
Reza blames the protests for bringing mounting pressure on Iran from Western countries, which imposed sanctions on Iranian security forces and officials for alleged human rights abuses. Iran accused Western powers of fomenting the unrest.
“I wish the protests had not taken place … our enemies used it as a pretext to mount pressure on our country,” he said.
Atousa looks back on that period with sadness.
“I was hopeful,” she said. “I thought finally the change will come and I will be able to live a life with no suppression in a free country … I paid a heavy price, but the regime is still here.”
World
Minnesota braces for what’s next amid immigration arrests and in the wake of Renee Good shooting
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Already shaken by the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration officer, Minnesota’s Twin Cities on Sunday braced for what many expect will be a new normal over the next few weeks as the Department of Homeland Security carries out what it called its largest enforcement operation ever.
Protesters screamed at heavily-armed federal agents and honked car horns, banged on drums and blew whistles in attempts to disrupt their operations in one Minneapolis neighborhood filled with single-family homes.
There was some pushing and several people were hit with chemical spray just before agents banged down the door of one home on Sunday. They later took one man away in handcuffs.
“We’re seeing a lot of immigration enforcement across Minneapolis and across the state, federal agents just swarming around our neighborhoods,” said Jason Chavez, a Minneapolis city councilmember. “They’ve definitely been out here.”
Chavez, the son of Mexican immigrants who represents an area with a growing immigrant population, said he is closely monitoring information from chat groups about where residents are seeing agents operating.
People holding whistles positioned themselves in freezing temperatures on street corners in the neighborhood where 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed Wednesday, watching for any signs of federal agents.
More than 20,000 people have taken part in a variety of trainings to become “observers” of enforcement activities in Minnesota since the 2024 election, said Luis Argueta, a spokesperson for Unidos MN, a local human rights organization .
“It’s a role that people choose to take on voluntarily, because they choose to look out for their neighbors,” Argueta said.
The protests have been largely peaceful, but the Twin Cities remained anxious. Minneapolis public schools on Monday will start offering remote learning for the next month in response to concerns that children might feel unsafe venturing out while tensions remain high.
Many schools closed last week after Good’s shooting and the upheaval that followed.
While the enforcement activity continues, two of the state’s leading Democrats said on Sunday that the investigation into Good’s shooting death shouldn’t be overseen solely by the federal government.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith said in separate interviews Sunday that state authorities should be included in the investigation because the federal government has already made clear what it believes happened.
“How can we trust the federal government to do an objective, unbiased investigation, without prejudice, when at the beginning of that investigation they have already announced exactly what they saw — what they think happened,” Smith said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The Trump administration has defended the officer who shot Good in her car, saying he was protecting himself and fellow agents and that Good had “weaponized” her vehicle.
Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, defended the officer on Fox News Channel’s “The Sunday Briefing.”
“That law enforcement officer had milliseconds, if not short time to make a decision to save his life and his other fellow agents,” he said.
Lyons also said the administration’s enforcement operations in Minnesota wouldn’t be needed “if local jurisdictions worked with us to turn over these criminally illegal aliens once they are already considered a public safety threat by the locals.”
The killing of Good by an ICE officer and the shooting of two people by federal agents in Portland, Oregon, led to dozens of protests across the country over the weekend.
Thousands of people marched Saturday in Minneapolis, where Homeland Security called its deployment of immigration officers in the Twin Cities its biggest ever immigration enforcement operation.
___
Associated Press journalists Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis, Thomas Strong in Washington, Bill Barrow in Atlanta, and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.
World
Netanyahu and Rubio discuss US military intervention in Iran amid ongoing nationwide protests: report
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the possibility of U.S. intervention in Iran, according to a report.
The two leaders spoke by phone Saturday as Israel is on “high alert,” preparing for the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Iran, according to Reuters, citing multiple Israeli sources. A U.S. official confirmed the call to Fox News Digital but did not provide additional details.
The report comes as nationwide anti-regime demonstrations across Iran hit the two-week mark.
On Saturday, the Iranian regime triggered an internet “kill switch” in an apparent effort to conceal alleged abuses by security forces and as protests against it surged nationwide, according to a cybersecurity expert. The blackout reduced internet access to a fraction of normal levels.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio holds his end-of-year press conference at the State Department in Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2025. (Kevin Mohatt/Reuters)
On Sunday, Iran’s parliament speaker warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America strikes the Islamic Republic.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf issued the threat as lawmakers rushed the dais in the Iranian parliament, shouting, “Death to America!” according to The Associated Press.
President Donald Trump offered support for the protesters on Saturday, writing on Truth Social that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!”
IRANIAN MILITARY LEADER THREATENS PREEMPTIVE ATTACK AFTER TRUMP COMMENTS
In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran’s Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)
At a news conference Friday, Trump said Iran was facing mounting pressure as unrest spreads across the country.
“Iran’s in big trouble,” he said. “It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago. We’re watching the situation very carefully.”
The president said the U.S. would respond forcefully if the regime resorts to mass violence.
“We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts. And that doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts,” he said.
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Protests in Iran intensify for the 12th day. (The National Council of Resistance of Iran)
Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department and White House for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Emma Bussey, Brie Stimson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
World
Four killed, 20 injured in overnight Russian strikes across Ukraine
Published on
Russia fired more than 150 drones overnight into Sunday targeting close to two dozen locations across Ukraine, killing at least four people and injuring 20 more.
Ukraine’s Air Forces say they intercepted 125 drones aerially but confirmed that at least 25 strike drones struck their targets.
They added that Moscow’s latest barrage mainly targeted Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk, all of which were targeted in Saturday’s overnight strikes as well.
Local officials in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia say the strikes targeted residential areas and energy infrastructure. More than 385,000 homes were affected by electric, gas or water outages, at a critical time as temperatures plunged to 10 degrees below Celsius.
Regional lawmakers say service was restored to most of the affected households and areas by Sunday morning, but added that emergency work was still being carried out to restore power to the remaining homes.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of timing their attacks with the cold peaks of winter as to maximise civilian suffering.
“They struck targets that have no military purpose whatsoever – energy infrastructure, residential buildings. They deliberately waited for freezing weather to make things worse for our people. This is deliberate, cynical Russian terror specifically against civilians,” wrote Zelenskyy in a post on X.
He also noted that this week had seen heightened Russian assault on Ukrainian cities, announcing that his country’s defence forces recorded thousands of attacks using a variety of different weapons.
“Over the course of this week, Russia launched almost 1,100 attack drones against Ukraine, more than 890 guided aerial bombs, and over 50 missiles of various types – ballistic, cruise, and even the Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile.”
The Ukrainian leader thanked all units responsible for protecting the country and responding to attacks, and praised their tireless efforts and resilience.
He also called on allies to ensure his embattled country maintains “stable support”, in defence and diplomatic fields as coordinated dialogue efforts continue in search of peace.
Meanwhile, Russia says that one person was killed in Ukrainian strikes on the western city of Voronezh. Officials say a young woman succumbed to her wounds at an intensive care unit of a local hospital after debris from a drone fell on her house during Saturday’s attacks.
They added that at least three others were injured in the attacks which targeted more than 10 residential apartment buildings, private homes and a high school.
The city of Voronezh lies just 250 kilometres from the Ukrainian border and is home to approximately one million people. The attacks, which Kyiv have yet to confirm, came after the Kremlin’s major offensive on Ukraine in the early hours of Saturday.
Additional sources • AP
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