Iran protests 2025/26: Why people take to the streets despite mortal danger

Analysis using mass psychology, rational choice, and network theory

📖 Reading time: 6 minutes

Date: 2025-01-13

1. EVENT & CONTEXT

A young woman films thousands of people in Isfahan chanting “Death to the regime!” with her smartphone. Seconds later, a shot rings out. The camera shakes and the image goes black. But the video spreads despite internet blockades – via VPNs, satellite connections, any digital loophole that still works. And the next day, the streets are full again.

Since the end of December, mass protests have been rocking Iran. According to reports from exile media, over 12,000 people have already been killed – the largest massacre in recent Iranian history. The regime is responding with massive violence: live ammunition is being fired in Kurdish provinces, while in Tehran, mass arrests and tear gas are being used. Despite internet blockades and systematic repression, people continue to take to the streets in Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad, and other cities.

This raises a fundamental question: How can collective action be explained that, viewed rationally, appears suicidal? Why do people risk their lives even though the chances of success – especially at the beginning of protests – are low and the costs are extremely high?

Key facts:

• Over 12,000 deaths since the end of December (according to exile media)
• Protests in Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad, Kurdish regions
• Snipers in Kurdish provinces, mass arrests in Tehran
• Internet blockades by the regime, but protests continue
• Historical context: Previous waves of protests in 2009 (“Green Movement”), 2019, 2022 (“Woman, Life, Freedom”)

Sources: taz.de, Reuters, exile media

2. THEORETICAL LENSES

A) Mass psychology: Emotional transformation in crowds

Mass psychology, founded by Gustave Le Bon (1895) and radically developed by modern crowd research, examines how people undergo psychological transformations in crowds. While Le Bon still spoke of a loss of rationality, more recent approaches (Stephen Reicher, Clifford Stott) show that crowds develop a new, shared social identity.

Key mechanisms:

• Collective identity formation: “I” becomes “we”
• Emotional contagion: Feelings spread like waves through the crowd
• Anonymity and deindividuation: Reduced sense of individual responsibility
• Physical co-presence: The visibility of others intensifies emotions

Application to the Iran protests of 2025/26:

The Iran protests give rise to collective emotions of enormous intensity: anger over decades of economic misery and corruption, grief over systematic oppression, desperate hope for change. These emotions are amplified by physical co-presence. When thousands chant together, a feeling of overwhelming power arises—the individual perception of risk drops dramatically.

Concrete examples: Videos show how individual courageous individuals start shouting, and within seconds the whole crowd joins in. This emotional contagion works like a wave: the courage of individuals spreads to others, who in turn infect others. The feeling of “we are many, we are not alone” creates a collective identity that goes beyond rational cost-benefit calculations.

Anonymity in the crowd also offers psychological protection: individuals feel less exposed than someone standing alone on the street. Interestingly, the widespread videos reinforce this dynamic and create a virtual crowd—people who watch the videos feel part of a larger movement, even if they are not physically present.

Limitations: The theory does not explain why certain people join the masses and others do not. It underestimates the role of conscious strategic considerations and political organization. Furthermore, modern protest research shows that masses act in a more coordinated and rational manner than Le Bon suggested. The question of timing—why now?—remains largely unanswered.

B) Rational Choice: Calculation under extreme conditions

Rational choice theory, which is interdisciplinary and primarily rooted in economics and social sciences, views political action as the result of rational cost-benefit considerations. Individuals maximize their expected utility by taking into account costs, probabilities, and available information.

The public goods problem (Mancur Olson): Collective action is often irrational for the individual. When many people protest and overthrow the regime, everyone benefits—even those who did not protest (free riders). So why take the personal risk? Theoretical extensions offer solutions: selective incentives (individual incentives), expanded concepts of utility (moral satisfaction also counts), and information cascades (when many participate, the probability assessment changes).

Application to the Iran protests of 2025/26:

At first glance, rational choice seems to fail here: the costs (death, torture, arrest) far exceed any individual benefit. But a differentiated application reveals more complex mechanisms:

Firstly – changed baseline: The costs of not acting have risen massively. The economic situation is catastrophic (inflation above 40%, youth unemployment, international sanctions), and systematic oppression is commonplace. The status quo has become extremely risky for many people—the baseline risk of simply continuing to live under the regime is high. Protesting “only” adds another risk to the existing ones.

Secondly – collective benefit: The expected benefit is not purely individual. People also maximize the benefit for their family, their ethnic group (particularly relevant in Kurdish regions), their community, and future generations. The potential system change has a collective benefit that can exceed the individual costs – especially if you have children for whom you want to ensure a better future.

Thirdly – moral motives in the calculation: For many, it is a question of dignity and self-respect. The psychological benefit of remaining true to one’s convictions and not appearing cowardly is real and measurable. Those who do not protest risk social pressure in certain milieus (selective incentives also work negatively).

Fourth – information cascades: This describes a process in which people base their decisions on the actions of others. When many people protest, the subjective probability of the regime falling increases – which in turn increases the expected benefits and motivates more people to join in. It is a self-reinforcing mechanism: the more people join in, the more rational it becomes for individuals to join in as well.

Limitations: The theory has difficulty explaining the moment of the “tipping point” – the moment when a critical mass is suddenly reached. It underestimates emotional and identity-related factors that are not easily translated into utility calculations. In addition, it often makes unrealistic assumptions about information: in reality, protesters have incomplete, distorted information about the probabilities of success.

C) Network theory: Mobilization through digital and social structures

Network theory from computer science and physics analyzes how information and behavior spread through networked structures. It examines hubs (central nodes), clusters (dense local networks), and weak ties (connections between different groups).

Key concepts:

• Small-world networks: It takes only a few steps to get from one node to any other.
• Cascading behavior: Behaviors spread in a cascade when certain thresholds are exceeded.
• Robustness and vulnerability: Networks can be deliberately disrupted, but they are also surprisingly resilient.

Application to the Iran protests of 2025/26:

Despite internet blockades, protest videos and calls for mobilization continue to spread. How? The network perspective shows that the Iranian protest network is decentralized and redundant. There is no single central organization that can be shut down. Instead, there are numerous local clusters (neighborhoods, universities, ethnic communities) that are connected to each other by weak ties.

Digital resilience: Activists use VPNs, Tor browsers, satellite internet (Starlink), and mesh networks. Even if the regime blocks 90% of connections, the remaining 10% is sufficient to pass on information. The network structure exhibits “scale-free” properties: a few hubs (highly connected individuals) play a disproportionate role in dissemination.

Mobilization cascades: When many people become active in a dense local cluster (e.g., a university), the likelihood of others joining increases dramatically. This explains why protests often “explode” in certain places while failing to catch on elsewhere—local network density varies.

Limitations: Network theory is strong in explaining diffusion, but weak in explaining motivation. It says little about why people use the network to protest. It also often underestimates the importance of content and emotions—a network does not automatically disseminate all information equally effectively.

3. SYNTHESIS & ANALYSIS

The three perspectives are not contradictory, but rather illuminate different levels of the same phenomenon:

Micro level (psychology): Mass psychology explains the emotional and identity-related mechanisms through which the individual is transformed in the crowd. It shows how people find the courage to take to the streets.

Meso level (networks): Network theory explains the structures through which mobilization takes place—despite repression and internet blockades. It shows through which channels protest spreads.

Macro level (economics): Rational choice shows that even under extreme conditions, extended rationality exists. It explains why people protest under certain conditions (when the benefits exceed the costs).

Integrative view: People do make rational decisions (rational choice), but (1) their rationality is limited by emotions and cognitive biases (mass psychology), (2) their decisions are embedded in social networks that channel information and behavior (network theory), and (3) the masses themselves change the parameters of rational calculation.

What all three approaches tend to underemphasize:

• Historical path dependency: Memories of 1979 (revolution), 2009 (“Green Movement”), 2019, and 2022 (“Woman, Life, Freedom”) shape expectations
• Narrative and symbolic politics: The role of slogans, symbols, collective memory
• External factors: International solidarity, sanctions, diaspora mobilization
• Gender dimension: The special role of women in the current protest movement

The protests in Iran show that people are capable of extraordinary courage when multiple factors come together—unbearable conditions (rational calculation), collective identity (mass psychology), robust network structures (information technology), and the hope for change.

4. RECOMMENDED READING

Introductory reading: Clark McPhail: The Myth of the Madding Crowd (1991) Accessible deconstruction of classical mass psychology with empirically based analysis of collective behavior. Shows how crowds act in a more coordinated and rational manner than Le Bon suggested. Perfect for beginners, as it dispels popular myths.

In-depth: Susanne Lohmann: The Dynamics of Informational Cascades: The Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig, East Germany, 1989-91 in: World Politics 47(1), 1994 Formal modeling of how rational actors can trigger protests under uncertainty. Classic application of rational choice to revolutionary mass mobilization. The Leipzig case is structurally very similar to Iran (authoritarian regime, information blockade, sudden escalation).

Interdisciplinary: Duncan Watts: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (2003) Understandable introduction to network theory with applications to social phenomena. Explains how behaviors spread through networks.

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