Well before the latest wave of protests in Iran, Saeed, a tech entrepreneur in Tehran, was ready for them.
For months, it felt as if he and his country were in free-fall. He had spent many sleepless nights since Israeli forces battered Iran’s nuclear facilities in June agonising over his family’s future and whether more war was inevitable. A deepening economic crisis forced him to lay off his employees. All the while, Iran’s plummeting currency was evaporating his savings.
“I made my decision to join before these protests even took place,” said Saeed, who asked to withhold his full name, fearing retribution from authorities.
“I am tired and exhausted by the fools and idiots that get to govern us,” he said. “I am tired of their theft, corruption and injustice.”
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On December 28th, the Iranian rial plunged to an all-time low against the US dollar, and unleashed the wave of anger Saeed had been expecting.
Within hours, shopkeepers in Tehran’s bazaars – the historic heart of Iran’s economy – organised a strike and took to the streets of the capital.
Over two weeks, protests have spread from the markets and universities of major cities to the impoverished towns in Iran’s hinterland, killing dozens, according to rights groups.
The protests come at a precarious moment for Iran’s authoritarian government. Already weakened by its international foes, it now faces domestic unrest drawing an ever broader spectrum of the population.
Over more than a decade – in 2009, 2019, 2021 and 2022 – Iranians have taken to the streets against their theocratic rulers. In all those movements, security forces prevailed with brutal crackdowns.
Yet each of the 10 protesters interviewed by phone – all of whom requested to withhold surnames for their safety – said these protests felt far more dangerous to the Islamic Republic.
“We can see from the news and from some government reactions that this regime is terrified to its bones,” said Sahar (33), a protester in Tehran.
Domestically, the widespread demonstrations of 2022, known as the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, rebelled against social repression, such as the mandatory hijab, but they barely mobilised poorer, conservative Iranians. Today’s protests, spurred by economic pain, brought the poor and middle class alike to the streets.
Beyond its borders, Iran – once the linchpin of a powerful network of anti-western forces – has seen its regional power rapidly diminish over the past two years, as Israel decimated its regional allies, Hizbullah and Hamas.
In late 2024, rebels toppled president Bashar Assad of Syria, one of Iran’s most important partners. And last June, Israel launched a 12-day war, briefly joined by US warplanes, that killed top security officials, battered nuclear facilities and degraded military infrastructure.
Despite heavy losses during the June war, Iranian authorities still have an enormous, largely intact security apparatus. But they must choose how to respond, knowing that Israel and the United States, which have expressed support for the protests, could try to intervene.
“Everyone should know that the Islamic Republic came to power through the blood of several hundred thousand honourable people,” the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a speech on Friday. “In the face of those who engage in destruction, the Islamic Republic will not back down.”
The currency crash enraged shopkeepers, who were already reeling from months of currency depreciations that kept prices changing daily.
Over the past decade, inflation has lingered above 40 per cent.
“People’s income is a third to a fourth of what it was,” said Mahdi Ghodsi, an economist with the Center for Middle East and Global Order.
Shuttered marketplaces
That the protests started with bazaar merchants added momentum symbolically – they initiated the protests that led to Iran’s 1979 revolution – but also practically, said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, the head of the economic think tank the Bourse and Bazaar Foundation.
“In order to organise a protest, you need to be networked, and you need to be able to afford to partake in protests,” he said. “This is what makes bazaaris different from other social groups. They can all agree to shut their shops and take to the streets.”
As merchants shuttered Iranian marketplaces, students launched protests on university campuses.
At Shiraz University in southwest Iran, students planned for protests by communicating in code in chat groups previously used to discuss class work, according to three students who would not give their names for fear of retribution.
On the first evening, one student said, the campus protesters burned a flag of the Islamic Republic.
University officials locked the dormitory gates the next night to try to prevent students from joining protests.
By the third night, security forces arrived, seeking dialogue over potential government reforms, the students said.
The youths refused, the students said – they were not looking for rehabilitation. They wanted the government to fall.
After that, security forces began using batons, pepper spray and stones, two students said. The students kept protesting anyway.
From the start of the protests, Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian tried to react quickly and with empathy. He replaced the central bank governor and publicly acknowledged the economic pain protesters were feeling.
He also ordered a monthly payment for Iranians roughly equivalent to $7 – still a far cry from the drastic changes economists say are needed.
“If people are dissatisfied, we are to blame,” Pezeshkian said last week during a visit to southwestern Iran. “Do not look for America or anyone else to blame.”
But then, the Trump administration launched a stunning operation to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
After the capture, president Donald Trump doubled down on threats against the Iranian government: “If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States.”
Yet Khamenei remained defiant. Warning against foreign meddling, he insisted that “rioters must be put in their place.”
Around the country, the crackdowns became more violent.
In the town of Shahrekord, near the historic city of Isfahan, a video showed protesters screaming as police sprayed a young woman down with a water hose.
Despite the risks, several protesters described demonstrators as increasingly emboldened.
“People have become much braver than in previous protests,” said Saeed, the tech entrepreneur. “They are using any tool and location at their disposal and available to them.”
On a street in Shiraz, videos showed police assaulting and beating a man on the ground. When protesters threw projectiles at police, officers moved toward them on motorcycles. Moments later, a protester doused one officer with gasoline and set him alight.
The economic suffering has particularly fuelled unrest in rural provinces and border areas, home to impoverished communities and marginalised ethnic minorities.
On January 3rd, security forces in the western border province of Ilam shot at protesters trying to approach a government building, according to two Kurdish rights groups. The rights groups’ death toll ranged from three to five.
“Either we die, or we get out of these terrible conditions we are living under,” said Ali (40), a protester. “There is no way these protests calm down. There is no way, this time, that they can stop us.”
On Thursday, the government imposed a sweeping internet blackout, and the protests took a deadlier turn.
On Friday, Tehran’s prosecutor announced that “terrorists” involved in the unrest could be sentenced to death, and a statement from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council vowed to “show no leniency whatsoever toward saboteurs”.
Such warnings may hang heavy over many Iranians, wary of upheaval that could destroy their public institutions, said Batmanghelidj, the economist. Iranians are keenly aware of the relative stability that has set their country apart from so many of its neighbours that have been devastated by uprisings and civil war.
“They are faced with this daunting question,” he said. “Can you have a revolution without burning it all down?’
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
