Fearing the people, they have moved Khamenei to a hole in South Khorasan on the edge of the desert

What he says

An English translation of the talk, which is in Persian. It was made with AI from YouTube's automatic captions and may contain errors; the Persian transcript is authoritative. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

0:01 Hello. Today is Friday, 19 Dey 1404, January 9, 2026. First, I apologize that on Wednesday I could not be with you because of illness, and my voice still has problems; I hope you will graciously forgive me. What is happening in Iran in these hours and these days is, naturally and without doubt, one of the turning points of our contemporary history. After 47 years of rule filled with failures, repression, massacres and turning its back on the nation, the Islamic Republic has reached a point where it has neither legitimacy nor

1:03 acceptance. Legitimacy, meaning the rightfulness of governing, has long since vanished. In terms of legitimacy, the people no longer accept the regime's ideology, its propaganda, its stated goals, its Guardianship of the Jurist, its rulers or its officials. In effect, they do not consider this regime and its agents worthy, fit or entitled to rule over the people. Acceptance, meaning popularity, meaning being loved by the people, has also long since vanished. After the crisis of legitimacy, the main reason for this is the regime's inability to solve the people's problems, the

2:00 great problems our people are struggling with: poverty, hunger and runaway inflation, recession and economic stagnation, the wheels of the country grinding to a halt, as well as the water and climate situation, environmental shortages, and a long list of problems that have been placed on the nation's shoulders. The people rightly believe that this regime no longer has the ability to solve their problems. Add to this the all-encompassing corruption that has gripped the regime, this ruling kleptocracy of mafia gangs that make up the structure of the regime, with Khamenei himself at its head, the great thief and the great godfather

2:59 of the mafias. This has raised the people's hatred of them far higher. Whenever this regime has faced the people, instead of serving them it has acted as if the people owed it something and has tried to speak the language of force and repression. Under these conditions, the spark struck by the Tehran Bazaar and the shopkeepers around it seemed to reach a powder keg, and over the past 13 days it has gradually spread across the whole country. Mr. Reza Pahlavi's successful calls for Thursday and Friday showed that the people are ready to move past this regime. Likewise, the successful call by the Kurdish parties and Kurdistan's civil society for a strike in

3:59 those areas, which reached more than 50 cities, showed that Iran's ethnic groups in various regions are also ready to take part in a national, nationwide movement. In Baluchistan, too, the remarks of Mowlavi Abdolhamid today, the things he said outside of Friday prayers, and the support people gave were well received, and this shows that in this movement all the people can move forward hand in hand. Khamenei, who had first been taken to Marzanabad on the Chalus road, was brought out today and spoke, and then, according to news received, they took him from there to one of the holes he has in South Khorasan on the edge of the desert. This helpless,

4:59 cowardly leader, afraid that the people might get their hands on him, has hidden himself away in a hole, a place where they have apparently also arranged military equipment around him, and they have hidden him in such a place. But in his own speech, Khamenei once again emphasized that he is ready to repress the people and kill the people, and that he relies on his machinery of repression. In fact, we know that the regime has set out four stages for dealing with protests. Stage one is called "issue"; stage two is "harm"; stage three, in which the IRGC takes over command, is called "threat"; and stage

5:52 four is "crisis," the juncture at which the regime is overthrown. On Khamenei's orders, since the night before last they have in fact moved to stage three. They have put on their agenda the arrest of activists, field activists and on-the-ground organizers, those whom they have identified. That is why it is essential that field activists take care not to be identified by the regime, so that they can manage the movement wherever they are. Likewise, they began cutting off the internet last night to draw a black curtain over the country, and even cut off Iran's international telephone calls, the international lines. Then they brought in forces who, through beatings, and if they can,

6:47 with pellet guns, attack the people, or in some places, such as Kermanshah, where things have come to clashes, even turn on the people with live ammunition. This approach of Khamenei's, which he still thinks will work for him, will most likely turn against him, and his machinery of repression will fall apart. Especially since Mr. Trump has so far threatened three or four times that if they resort to killing the people, America will retaliate. Of course, it is not clear what he will do, but he has said it, and in any case it was seen in Venezuela that America has the ability to either kill or arrest a leader and take him away

7:46 without American military forces getting into serious fighting. In any case, at this stage we have reached, for the protests to bear fruit as quickly as possible, we must not neglect two other pillars. The second pillar is strikes and paralyzing the regime. Whenever strikes reach the energy, transportation and banking sectors and become nationwide, they bring the whole country to a standstill. Therefore, organizing and moving toward these sectors, especially energy and transportation, whether

8:39 urban or road transportation, freight or passenger, is something that shuts down the country entirely, and the regime will have no choice but to surrender. Energy is one of the sectors that, when it goes on a nationwide strike, shuts down the whole country, and the regime's machinery is paralyzed as well. Banking is where the country's money circulates, and if it can strike nationwide, all of the country's transactions will in effect grind to a halt. Therefore, adding strikes and paralyzing the regime is a shortcut that complements the protests and quickly drives the regime to

9:38 the edge of the cliff. The third pillar is defections from the regime, for which the conditions are very ripe. The regime's bureaucracy, its intelligence, security, military and police sectors are all on the verge of turning their backs on the dictator, and in fact the people must draw them toward themselves, embrace them and bring them over, because their joining the people will confront the dictator with a sudden collapse. In any case, these are critical moments in which our contemporary history is taking shape. But

10:30 as for what will happen: the victory of the opposition, whether republicans, monarchists, ethnic groups or various groups of the people, and bringing down the regime, is one issue. Another issue is how power is taken, so that there are as few problems as possible in running the country, and so that the people can, with maximum speed and maximum efficiency, take the country out of the hands of the current rulers and transfer it to a secular democracy based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in harmony with the modern world. Such a

11:27 transition requires the unity of the people: unity in slogans and in strategies, as they say, the sovereignty of the people; unity among the various factions of the people and the various classes of the people, the working class, farmers, our middle class, shopkeepers, teachers, employees, lawyers, journalists, medical staff and so on; that is, the social groups, and their unity with the main political currents that must support them, namely the monarchists, the republicans and Iran's ethnic groups, most of whom are politically republican

12:19 but also have ethnic demands. If these three major tendencies can move forward united at this stage, their effective cooperation will help ensure that the country's transition is accompanied by as much calm as possible. We will talk more about this, and about how we should approach the international players, the players among the people and the various groups, and how combining them can bring this important task to fruition. Hoping for the victory of Iran and the Iranian people.