Hundreds of protesters are believed to have been killed or injured, and many more detained.
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Verified videos and eyewitness accounts seen by the BBC appeared to show the government was ramping up its response, as it continues an overarching internet blackout.
The country's attorney general, Mohammad Movahedi Azad, said on Saturday that anyone protesting would be considered an "enemy of God" - an offence that carries the death penalty.
Hundreds of protesters are believed to have arrested since demonstrations began more than two weeks ago.
The protests were sparked by soaring inflation, and have spread to more than 100 cities and towns across every province in Iran. Now protesters are calling for an end to the clerical rulership of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Khamenei has dismissed demonstrators as a "bunch of vandals" seeking to "please" US President Donald Trump.
The Iranian government has imposed the internet shutdown in an effort to stop the protests. Iran's data infrastructure is tightly controlled by the state and security authorities. Internet access is largely limited to a domestic intranet, with restricted links to the outside world.
Over the past few years, the government has progressively curtailed access to the global internet. However, during the current round of protests, authorities have, for the first time, not only shut down access to the worldwide internet but also severely restricted the domestic intranet.
An expert told BBC Persian that the current shutdown is more severe than that imposed during the "Women, Life, Freedom" uprising three years ago. Alireza Manafi, an internet researcher, said internet access in Iran, in any form, was now "almost completely down".
He added the only likely way to connect to the outside world was via Starlink, b