The Beiruter's Watch

Each protest event is classified according to the political message expressed at that demonstration into five broad categories: support for U.S. or allied intervention in Iran, opposition to that intervention, support for Iran, opposition to Iran, or mixed or unclear positions. Critically, a single protest can carry multiple tags, as demonstrators often combine positions rather than express a single, fixed stance.

ACLED’s dataset therefore makes it possible to trace not just where protests are occurring, but how the war is being interpreted across different countries.

The geography of protest activity

While 65 countries recorded protest activity, they were not evenly distributed. Nearly half of all recorded events, 1,089 out of 2,349 (46.36 percent), took place in the Middle East with the highest protest totals in Iran (639), Yemen (235) and Bahrain (126). Yet not all countries in the Middle East engaged in comparable levels of protest activity, as Turkey (43), Iraq (41), Israel, and Syria (1) were the only other countries to appear in the dataset.

Beyond the Middle East, significant concentrations of protests occurred in Pakistan (377), the United States (206), and India (169), meaning that just six countries—Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, the United States, India, and Bahrain—accounted for 74.6 percent of all protests recorded worldwide. That is a remarkable concentration. While global in scope, the protest wave was driven by a relatively small cluster of countries.

Core patterns in protest behaviour

The single strongest pattern in the dataset is the overwhelming dominance of anti-intervention messaging. Of the 2,349 protests recorded, 1,974 (84 percent) carried the anti-U.S. intervention tag, while only 173 (7.36 percent) were labeled pro-U.S. intervention.

But this opposition to intervention does not translate into a unified stance on Iran itself. Alongside anti-intervention messaging, 860 protests (36.6 percent) expressed support for Iran, while 229 (9.7 percent) were explicitly anti-Iran, and 62 (2.6 percent) carried mixed or ambiguous positions that did not clearly align with either side.

Beyond what protesters were expressing, the data also shows how protests unfolded in practice. One of the most important findings is how nonviolent the protest wave remained despite its scale: of the 2,349 protests, 2,265 (96.4 percent) were classified as peaceful, while only 29 required intervention and 53 were categorized as violent demonstrations or riots.

Regional divergence in protest narratives

If anti-intervention was the dominant global message, attitudes toward Iran were far more geographically divided, with anti-Iran protests concentrated in Europe and the United States and pro-Iran protests in the Middle East.

Of the 229 protests coded as anti-Iran, Europe recorded the highest number, with 143 in total. North America followed with 74, of which the U.S. was responsible for 46. Within Europe, Spain accounted for 42 of the 143 anti-Iran protests (29.4 percent), and Germany contributed 31, or 21.7 percent. France added 14, the Netherlands 13, and the United Kingdom 8.

These patterns are not only geographic but also ideological. In countries such as the United States, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, protests were more often coded as both anti-Iran and pro-U.S. intervention. In Spain, by contrast, the majority of anti-Iran protests were also anti-U.S. intervention. The same label therefore reflects different underlying political positions.

A different dynamic emerges for pro-Iran protest activity, which is overwhelmingly centered in the Middle East. Of all protests carrying a pro-Iran label, 726 occurred in the region, including 346 in Iran, 234 in Yemen, and 118 in Bahrain.

Outside the region, the numbers drop sharply. South Asia recorded 67 pro-Iran protests, the vast majority of them in Pakistan (59). Europe accounted for just 10, distributed across the United Kingdom (5), Germany (2), and single events in Belgium, Greece, and Italy. North America recorded 8 pro-Iran protests, including 4 in the United States, 3 in Canada, and 1 in Mexico.

Yet even in these Western contexts, pro-Iran positioning is rarely straightforward. Of the protests  in Europe and North America that received a pro-Iran label, nine were also tagged as either pro-U.S. intervention or anti-Iran, indicating that expressions of support for Iran often coexist with competing or contradictory political messages.

Country level case studies

Iran: overwhelming alignment with limited exceptions

Iran is by far the single largest protest environment in the dataset, with 639 demonstrations, or more than one in four globally. But what stands out is not just the scale; it is the consistency of how the war is framed.

An overwhelming majority of protests, 565 out of 639, or roughly 88 percent, were characterized as anti-U.S. intervention, often overlapping with pro-Iran messaging, which appeared in 346 protests (54.15%). The combination suggests that, within Iran, demonstrations are not primarily divided between pro- and anti-government camps, but instead converge around opposition to external military action, frequently alongside expressions of support for the state.

At the same time, the dataset captures a small number of exceptions that complicate this otherwise highly aligned picture. Three protests were classified as “mixed” intervention, reflecting more ambiguous or localized grievances rather than clear alignment with either side. These include a demonstration in Marivan, where residents protested the presence of IRGC forces in their neighborhood, a protest by oil and petrochemical workers who were unable to leave on Khark Island, and a smaller demonstration in Karaj in central Iran.

Alongside these, only one protest in the entire dataset is explicitly categorized as anti-Iran. This occurred on March 17 in Tehran, during Chaharshanbe Suri, when demonstrators chanted anti-government slogans before being forcibly dispersed by security forces.

Numerically, these cases are negligible. Analytically, however, they are important. They suggest that even at a moment of overwhelming external alignment, where protest activity is largely directed against U.S. intervention, pockets of domestic discontent persist, surfacing briefly in isolated instances before being quickly contained.

Yemen, Bahrain, and Pakistan: alignment, intensity, and timing

Despite broadly aligned protest messaging, these cases diverge in how that alignment is expressed across consistency, intensity, and timing.

In Yemen, which is the third most active country globally, with 235 protests, consistency of messaging stands out. All but one protest is classified as both anti-U.S. intervention and pro-Iran. The near-total alignment suggests a protest environment shaped by a single dominant narrative.

Bahrain, with 126 protests, shows a similar ideological pattern but at a very different level of intensity. All protests were either anti-U.S. intervention and/or pro-Iran, with 118 (93.7 percent) explicitly classified as pro-Iran. But unlike Yemen, 35.7 percent of protests (45) were non-peaceful, compared to just 3.6 percent globally. That makes Bahrain one of the clearest outliers in the database in terms of how confrontational protests became.

Pakistan follows a different trajectory. With 377 protests, it is the second-largest protest arena globally, accounting for 16 percent of all demonstrations. Yet strikingly, although 370 protests (98.1 percent) were peaceful, all instances of violence were concentrated on a single day: March 1, the day after Khamenei’s assassination. Violence, in other words, was not sustained but concentrated in a single moment.

Israel: limited protests in a contested environment

In contrast to the high levels of protest activity seen elsewhere in the Middle East, Israel saw extremely limited protests. Only four demonstrations were recorded, all occurring within a narrow window between March 3 and March 7.

Despite their small number, these protests are remarkably consistent in their framing. All four were anti-war and opposed to U.S. intervention in Iran, indicating that even within Israel, recorded protest activity reflects a clear anti-escalation current.

The demonstrations themselves, however, reveal a more contested protest environment. One protest in Tel Aviv on March 3 was quickly dispersed by police for violating wartime gathering restrictions. Another in Jerusalem on March 5 included calls for soldiers to refuse orders, signaling a more direct challenge to state policy.

The most significant incident occurred on March 7, when a protest in Tel Aviv escalated after right-wing counter-protesters confronted demonstrators, leading to clashes and arrests. This event was classified as a violent demonstration, one of only a small number globally.

United States: a fragmented protest landscape

With 206 protests, the United States is one of the most frequent sites of protest activity, but its protest landscape is highly varied, with individual demonstrations often reflecting multiple, overlapping messages.

This is reflected in the distribution of protest messaging: 79.1 percent opposed U.S. intervention, while 25.2 percent supported it, 22.3 percent expressed anti-Iran sentiment, and smaller shares reflected mixed (3.4 percent) or pro-Iran (1.9 percent) positions. Notably, 14 of the 163 protests labeled as anti-U.S. intervention also received a pro-U.S. intervention or anti-Iran label, highlighting how different positions can coexist within a single demonstration.

Despite this fragmentation, protest activity in the United States remained overwhelmingly peaceful. Only one protest was classified as violent, when an anti-intervention rally on March 6 in New York’s Washington Square Park escalated into a fistfight following clashes with counter-protesters supporting U.S. action, resulting in several arrests.

A global movement, shaped locally

ACLED’s data reveals a protest wave that is global in scope but uneven in structure. A shared opposition to U.S. intervention masks significant differences in how protests are organized, expressed, and experienced across countries. The result is not a single global movement, but a set of distinct protest landscapes shaped by regional and local political contexts.

When the Israel–Iran war broke out, protest activity spread across the globe with unusual speed and scale. Data shared with The Beiruter from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), an independent organization that tracks political violence and demonstration events in real time, records 2,349 protests worldwide from the outbreak of the conflict through March 20 alone.