Amid intensifying protests in Iran, the world’s richest man has weighed in.
On January 4, Elon Musk, the multi-billionaire owner of social media platform X, responded to a post by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that said “we will not give in to the enemy” by suggesting in Farsi that he was delusional.
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Then, on Saturday, Musk’s platform X changed the Iranian flag emoji on the site from the one used since the Islamic revolution in 1979 to the pre-revolution flag featuring a lion and sun.
Some demonstrators inside and outside of Iran have waved the pre-1979 flag as a protest against the current regime.
Musk’s moves have gained some support from critics of the regime in Tehran. However, analysts debate the extent to which such moves can have an impact on the ground in Iran.
What’s behind the protests?
Protests in Iran began on December 28 amid soaring inflation in the country. They’ve since spread to more than 100 cities and towns, and are now reportedly taking place in every province in the country.
“The focus of the protests is on the core of the state and governance of the country because political, economic, social, cultural, or even environmental policies have not worked for [protesters],” Negar Mortazavi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, told Al Jazeera. “Economics, though, was the start of it.”
Many of the protesters are calling for an end to the rule of the country’s ayatollahs who, along with their Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), took over after the 1979 revolution.
Khamenei, the current supreme leader, has led the country since 1989. And while his rule has survived a number of waves of unrest, including the mass “Women, Life, Freedom” protests of 2022, some analysts believe that the latest demonstrations are among the biggest challenges his regime has faced.
“The Trump administration’s decision to quit the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and reimpose sanctions – and its failure to reach a new deal with Iran last year – have crippled the economy and increased corruption, benefitting a small sanctions-busting elite,” said Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington and a lecturer in international affairs at George Washington University.
“Add to that the severe blows inflicted on Iran’s regional allies since October 7, 2023, the Israeli and US strikes last summer, and it is hard to see a way out [for the regime].”
The Iranian regime has enforced an internet blackout in the country since Thursday, though some videos have still managed to circulate online of masked protesters clashing with security forces in Iranian cities.
The semiofficial news agency Tasnim reported on Sunday that the number of security personnel killed has reached 109. Opposition activists say the death toll is higher and includes dozens of protesters.
Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the figures coming out of Iran.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has threatened to intervene if the authorities kill more protesters.
Enter Elon
Musk, a longtime tech mogul heading US government-supported companies including Tesla and SpaceX, left a role with the Trump administration, where he led the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), in late May.
Musk’s work with DOGE was widely criticised, though his purchase of social media platform X and vocal support for racist policies have also attracted widespread condemnation in recent years.
Today, Musk is more focused on his private businesses, though he still wades into politics from time to time, particularly to push right-wing conspiracy theories about “white genocide” and immigration.
As for Iran, during the 2022 “Women, Life, Freedom” protests and again in 2025’s 12-Day War – which killed more than 610 people in Iran and 28 in Israel – Musk provided internet access to people inside the country through his satellite service Starlink.
Iran has reportedly jammed Starlink signals during the latest protests.
“The state uses internet disruption and shutdown to prevent more mobilisation of protesters and communication between protest groups and also to prevent news of it spreading,” Mortazavi said.
“It still happens with a delay when the internet comes back on, but what it does is hamper mobilisation and slows down the process of the protests. That’s the first goal of a comms shutdown.”
This is where Starlink can be particularly useful. But analysts say Musk responding to Khamenei’s post and changing the flag on X are not likely driven by ideology.
“I doubt he cares about Iran per se,” said Slavin. “But he wants to gin up more traffic for X, and this is one way to do it.”
How useful are Musk’s latest interventions?
The change of Iran’s flag on X came amid the internet blackout, so many protesters on the ground were likely unable to see it. Some Iranian officials, however, were briefly viewed by those outside the country with the pre-Islamic Republic flags in their account profiles.
“It’s a digital version of conquering a building and pulling down the old flag, and trying to put a new flag, that was essentially the symbolising they were going for,” historian Reza H Akbari, who is also an analyst on Iran at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, told Al Jazeera.
“The power of these types of moves are quite readily contested in mid- and long-term effects,” said Akbari. “But it could provide momentary excitement [for protesters on the ground if they can see it] though it’s very hard to gauge the amount of popular support.”
Slavin told Al Jazeera that “what is happening outside Iran is not that relevant” to what is taking place inside the country.
“The real struggle for freedom is among Iranians is still in Iran, not the diaspora or others interested in the topic,” she said.
“They can amplify developments within Iran and express support for human rights, but we cannot determine the outcome of the struggle.”
A ‘contentious’ flag
Meanwhile, Akbari says the pre-1979 flag “has always been contentious, essentially as a symbol for opposition both inside the country and abroad”.
He added that while the flag may mean different things to different critics of the current Iranian government, it is often associated with “the opposition that identifies as monarchist or wants the return of the shah”, who was deposed in 1979.
During recent protests, the ousted shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, called on demonstrators to take to the streets and occupy Iranian cities.
Some protesters, including those outside Iran, have called for a return to rule by the shah, despite his questionable popularity. Akbari said that Pahlavi himself has offered to act as a transitional leader but is not looking to move permanently to Iran to rule the country.
Analysts agree that Pahlavi would not be the man to lead the country forward, should Iran’s Islamic Republic fall after 47 years in power.
“Today, there are many decent and capable people in Iran who could replace those in power. Unfortunately, most of them are in prison,” Slavin said.
