When was the last violent protest?
Executive summary
The most recently documented episodes of violent protest in the provided reporting are the ongoing nationwide protests in Iran, which by late January 2026 were met with an escalating and lethal security crackdown reported as continuing through at least 29 January 2026 [1] [2]. Separately, domestic US demonstrations linked to federal immigration enforcement turned violent after federal agents shot and killed a Minneapolis resident on 24 January 2026, provoking mass protests and police/federal confrontations across several US cities through the weekend of 24–26 January 2026 [3] [4].
1. Iran: a nationwide uprising met by lethal force as of late January 2026
Reporting shows that large-scale antigovernment demonstrations in Iran that began in late December 2025 and intensified in early January 2026 continued into late January, and were being described by outlets such as The Guardian as a catastrophe of violent suppression with calls for independent inquiry into a crackdown that observers say killed thousands, with coverage through 29 January 2026 [1] [5]. International and human rights organizations documented security forces using live ammunition, tear gas and mass arrests in the first week of the unrest, with Amnesty and Human Rights Watch reporting dozens killed between 31 December 2025 and 3 January 2026 and media organizations documenting further mass killings and an internet blackout that complicated casualty verification [6] [7] [5]. Even where counts differ widely — government figures versus higher independent and media estimates — the consistent through-line in these sources is an ongoing violent crackdown into late January [5] [8] [1].
2. Minneapolis and US anti‑ICE protests: fatal shootings sparked violent confrontations in late January 2026
In the United States, demonstrations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal actions surged after federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on 24 January 2026, and those protests produced scenes of detention and clashes with federal officers in multiple cities over the following days, with photojournalism and reporting documenting arrests and forceful pushback as late as 26 January 2026 [3] [4]. Organizers planned hundreds of solidarity events nationwide after the shooting, and snapshots of confrontations — including federal officers detaining protesters and local arrests — show that the protests were not uniformly peaceful and produced violent episodes in several locales [3] [4].
3. Discrepancies in casualty counts and the limits of open-source verification
Different outlets and organizations offer markedly different casualty estimates for Iran — from government tallies in the low thousands to independent claims that run far higher — and reporting repeatedly warns that an internet blackout and restricted access have limited independent verification, so precise dating or definitive last‑act counts remain constrained by those information gaps [5] [8] [2]. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch provided verified instances of shootings and killings early in the wave, while later media reports summarized a continuing pattern of violent suppression through 29 January 2026; these layered sources indicate ongoing violence rather than a single discrete “last” incident [6] [1].
4. What “last violent protest” means here and the cautious conclusion
If “last violent protest” is interpreted as the most recent reported instance of violent protest activity in the supplied reporting, the answer is twofold: internationally, the Iran protests were still being violently suppressed with reporting through 29 January 2026 [1], and domestically in the United States, violent confrontations tied to the 24 January 2026 Minneapolis shooting had produced protest clashes into the weekend of 24–26 January 2026 [3] [4]. Because the Iran events are described as ongoing and the US protests as erupting in immediate response to a 24 January killing, the most recent documented violent episodes in these sources fall in the period 24–29 January 2026 [3] [1] [2].
5. Alternative perspectives and why precision is elusive
Sources diverge on scale and motive: Iranian state media portrays unrest as foreign‑backed rioting while international rights groups describe a brutal crackdown and potential massacres, and US outlets show local officials and organizers framing the ICE protests as demonstrations against federal policy that in some cases turned violent after lethal force was used [9] [6] [3]. Given the mixture of real-time social media, restricted access, and conflicting official narratives in the supplied reporting, it is not possible from these sources alone to provide a single definitive timestamp for “the last violent protest”; instead the available evidence points clearly to continued violent episodes between 24 and 29 January 2026 [3] [1] [2].