As the United States continues diplomatic talks with Iran's rulers, an Iranian protester who almost got arrested by regime forces in early January says "there is no deal with criminals".
Ava, whose name has been changed to protect her safety, spoke to the ABC from Kermanshah, at the foot of the Zagros Mountains in western Iran.
The interview took place on February 4, before Iranian and US officials held indirect nuclear talks, and was done in Farsi, through a patchy internet connection because of the near-total communications shutdown since January 8.
"There's fear, there's fury, there's anticipation," Ava, 34, told the ABC, adding that "riot police are everywhere".
"We don't feel one thing, but many different things.
"We [Iranians] have hope. But we want this [US intervention] to happen sooner than later.
"Right now, there's so many young people locked up in jail and facing execution."
Years of sanctions, economic mismanagement and corruption have gutted Iran's economy and chants of "Death to Khamenei!" during January's protests underscored how economic woes have turned to resentment of clerical rule.
The full scale of the bloodshed resulting from the Islamic Republic's violent crackdown against protesters is still not known.
But the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which has kept a running toll since the onset of the protests, said it had verified 6,961 deaths as of February 8 and counted more than 51,000 arrests.
A group of doctors gathering information from their colleagues inside Iran believed as many as 30,000 people were killed as of late January.
Mai Sato, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, told the ABC last month that "the actual number" of deaths, "once we have more information, will be significantly higher".
A month on from the country's nationwide protests, Iranians like Ava fear the world is turning its back on Iran's people.
"The world needs to stand on the right side of history," Ava said, before breaking out into tears.
Weeks ago, US President Donald Trump promised, "Help is on the way," and urged Iranians to "keep protesting".
In recent days, attention has turned to whether Washington and Tehran can strike a nuclear deal to avoid conflict.
The US president is facing pressure from regional states to continue negotiations, rather than another US-Iran conflict that could spill over to the rest of the oil-producing region and spark a deadly regional war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to meet with Mr Trump on Wednesday, local time, in Washington, where they will discuss negotiations with Iran.
Arrests of an 'overthrow-seeking circle'
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sought to crush the protests that swept across the country in late December and early January by unleashing the bloodiest crackdown of his nearly four decades in power.
Iran's authorities have since widened their crackdown on dissent, arresting several "reformist" political figures.
These include Hossein Karroubi, a political activist and son of Mehdi Karroubi, former member of Islamic Consultative Assembly of Iran and a reformist politician leading the National Trust Party.
Iran's Fars News Agency, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), also reported the arrests of Azar Mansouri, secretary-general of the Union of Islamic Iran People Party; Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, a political activist and former politician; and Mohsen Aminzadeh, a former deputy foreign minister under former president Mohammad Khatami.
A number of other prominent members of the Reform Front have likewise been summoned to judicial authorities.
Before news of the arrests emerged, the Fars News Agency wrote that "several members of an overthrow-seeking circle aligned with the enemy's recent anti-security project have been arrested".
Andrew Ghalili is the policy director of the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI), which has long been lobbying Washington to help the Iranian people overthrow Iran's regime and replace it with a secular democracy.
"There are fractures within the system, for sure, and those are increasing," he said, before adding that "there's no meaningful divide between so-called diplomats or reformists and hardliners".
He said the current "so-called reformists", including Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian and the country's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi — who met Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi in Muscat on Friday — were still "foot soldiers" for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Despite that, Mr Ghalili said there had been defections from the regime.
Some have been reported publicly, including a case last month in which Alireza Jeyrani Hokmabad, a senior Iranian diplomat based at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva, left his post and sought asylum in Switzerland with his family.
"We also see credible reports since the beginning of the crackdown of members of the security forces and the police refusing orders or stepping away or not showing up for work to avoid participating in the massacre," Mr Ghalili says.
Saeed Ghasseminejad, a senior adviser on Iran at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) — a Washington DC-based think tank that is staunchly anti-Iran's government — agreed there had been "many" instances of disobedience by the regime's security and military forces.
"IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp] intelligence publicly threatened those who were disobeying orders," he said.
"And we know that the regime had to bring in foreign fighters from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Lebanon because of this disobedience that happened inside the security and military forces."
No firm signs of defections from elite levels
Exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi last year established a formal defection platform for regime insiders, security personnel and members of the civil bureaucracy.
"Tens of thousands have applied to this platform," Mr Ghalili said, adding that the cases were "being vetted carefully, systematically".
"That level of response on its own tells you something fundamental has been shifting inside the regime and we're getting more and more reports like this."
But while the latest uprising is the most serious challenge yet to the Islamic Republic's 47-year rule, there are still no firm signs of defections from elite levels of the regime that could lead to it being toppled from within.
Mr Ghasseminejad said he was not hearing of regime defection at a high level yet "and there is a good reason for it".
"People from the elite of the regime, people who right now are in top positions, have reached out [to Reza Pahlavi] during the protest asking for assurances about their future if the regime falls," he said.
"The answer [from those who have reached out] is that if we do it now, the regime will kill our family and us."
Iranians will 'continue to rise up until they prevail'
As talks between the US and Iran continue, another protester, Arash, whose name has been changed to protect his safety, said people were aware that US warships were operating near Iran.
Arash lives in Amol, an ancient city in northern Iran, situated on the Haraz River near the Caspian Sea, and spoke to the ABC through a series of voice notes in Farsi.
He does not watch regime-controlled news networks, which he sees as "comedy" rather than journalism, and instead watches London-based, Persian language broadcaster Iran International, as well as BBC Persian.
He said Iranians were listening intently to whether the US and European countries would end diplomatic ties with the regime and support Iran's people.
Arash said the regime randomly accused protesters of being Israeli spies and arrested them.
Numerous human rights organisations have reported this happening since last June, when the US joined an Israeli military campaign against Iran's uranium enrichment and other nuclear installations.
According to HRANA's annual report, at least 2,063 people were executed in Iran in 2025.
That was a 119 per cent increase in death sentences compared to 2024.
In many of these executions, prisoners were denied a final visit with their families due to secrecy.
Now, Norway-based Iran Human Rights said it has received "multiple reports of secret executions carried out without any judicial process", which it is continuing to investigate.
It said wounded protesters were also at risk of being killed through the deliberate denial of medical treatment or because of torture in custody.
Mr Ghalili said the Iranian people had "rejected the regime categorically and they will continue to rise up until they prevail".
At the same time word of the regime's brutal crackdown spreads around the world, Mr Ghalii said "international recognition of the regime's illegitimacy is also growing".
He noted that in the wake of the massacre, the EU finally designated the IRGC as a terrorist organisation.
The US and Israel have warned Iran that they would strike again if the Islamic Republic continued its enrichment and ballistic missile programmes, and Arash hoped that day was near.
"People like me did what we could," he said, referring to the January 8 and 9 protests, which he took part in.
"We have reached the end of the line, and the regime knows it."
What to expect from nuclear talks?
Ava, who also took part in the January 9 protests to chant for the end of the regime and narrowly avoided arrest, said she was lucky that a stranger opened his home to her and others to protect them until it was safe to leave.
"We stayed and I really thank that gentleman that let us in his home," Ava said.
"We Iranians demonstrate remarkable unity during critical moments.
"But we could still hear them [security forces] dragging young protesters out of other apartments they were hiding in.
"We were hearing their screaming and pleading as they were being dragged away."
Iranians like Ava understand the reality that "every nation pursues its own interests".
But she believed the US and the democratic countries of the world should support Iran's people in their quest to break free of a regime that is massacring them.
"This is about humanity and we are waiting for them," she said, referring to the US, and sobbing once again at the thought of the world turning its back on Iran's people.
"Please help us."
When asked about the latest US-Iran negotiations, Mr Ghalili said he did not see a deal being reached.
"The two sides are very far apart," he said.
"[The] US continues to demand things well beyond nuclear issues like addressing ballistic missiles and proxies and repression."
A nuclear deal, he argued, would be a "double Obama move — not only saving the regime like he did with the JCPOA but also going back on America's word to help the Iranian people like he did to the Syrians".
"The US has way too much leverage this round to reasonably walk back these other demands and agree to some sort of JCPOA 2.0," Mr Ghalili said.
"And that's not even to mention that US credibility is on the line here."
Mr Ghasseminejad noted that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Trump both promised Iranian people that if they went to the streets, they would support them.
He said the "most likely outcome is some kind of military intervention" and, if that happens — and if there is greater defection from the regime's security and military forces — regime change is possible.
"That requires more work, [and it] requires more support from the international community," he said.
