The current wave of protests in Iran began on December 27, 2025, in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, where shopkeepers demonstrated against the collapse of the rial, the soaring value of the US dollar, and the rapidly rising cost of living. What initially appeared as economically driven unrest quickly expanded beyond the capital. Universities emerged as early hubs of mobilization, but more significantly, protests spread to provincial towns and smaller cities, where inflationary pressures are most acutely felt. Within weeks, the unrest had assumed a truly national character, encompassing a growing number of provinces and cutting across social classes.
Unlike the protests that followed the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, which were often concentrated in urban, middle-class settings, this movement has brought together bazaaris, students, workers, and segments of the urban poor, giving it an unusually broad social base. Among those arrested for supporting the protests, for example, is Mohammad Saedinia, a businessman known among others for his chain of cafés across Iran. This expansion in scope has been matched by a sharp escalation in state repression.
Since January 8, the authorities have imposed a near-total internet and communications blackout, severely restricting information flows and making independent verification of events difficult. Nevertheless, estimates suggest that the human toll has been extraordinarily high, with reported deaths numbering in the thousands. The combination of nationwide mobilization, communication blackouts, and mass casualties marks this moment as a significant rupture in the recent history of the Islamic Republic.
A Sensitive Historical Juncture
While protest movements are not new in Iran, the current episode is unfolding at a particularly sensitive historical juncture. The political-economic system is entering this crisis from a position of profound weakness. Years of international sanctions, chronic mismanagement, and systemic corruption have hollowed out the economy and eroded public trust. The twelve-day conflict with Israel placed additional pressure on an already fragile economy, accelerating inflation and currency depreciation.
Since the war, the Iranian rial has reportedly lost around 40 percent of its value, reaching an open-market low of approximately 1.4 million rials to the US dollar, compared to about 816,000 rials a year earlier. Annual inflation stood at roughly 42 percent in December, while food inflation exceeded 70 percent. Bread prices alone have increased by more than 100 percent over the past year, and many workers now survive on monthly wages equivalent to around 100 US dollars.
This domestic crisis has coincided with a transitional phase in Iran’s external orientation, as Tehran gradually shifts from an overreliance on the so-called “Axis of Resistance” toward a broader “Look East” strategy centered on new partnerships beyond the Western sphere. Iran’s regional position, however, has weakened markedly as its traditional network of allies and proxies has eroded. The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria and the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah have significantly reduced Iran’s strategic depth in the Middle East. The potential loss of more distant allies, such as Venezuela, further underscores the contraction of Iran’s longstanding support network. Yet this apparent retrenchment has been partially offset by Tehran’s integration into emerging non-Western multilateral frameworks: since January 2024, Iran has been a formal member of the BRICS grouping, providing an alternative platform for political and economic engagement within the Global South. At the bilateral level, relations with China have become increasingly structured and resilient, particularly in the energy sector, which remains a cornerstone of Sino-Iranian cooperation. In parallel, the restoration of diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, mediated by Beijing, signals a recalibration of Iran’s regional diplomacy and reflects China’s growing role as a strategic broker in West Asian geopolitics.
For the political elite, the June war reinforced perceptions of vulnerability and heightened fears of foreign intervention. The convergence of decades of accumulated social and political unrest —and their repeated repression—with economic collapse, geopolitical retreat, and security anxiety has played a key role in both the scale of the protests and the severity of the state’s response.
A Fragmented Opposition and Internal Tensions
Despite the remarkable geographic and social breadth of the current mobilization, the lack of a cohesive and credible organization—either inside or outside the country—makes the outcome of the unfolding events unpredictable. Protesters appear united primarily by what they reject, while remaining deeply divided over what should replace the current system and how such a transformation could be achieved. This reflects two levels of fragmentation: one societal and the other organizational. Indeed, despite the protests’ geographic and social reach, no coherent leadership or unified political programme has emerged. Neither domestic opposition groups nor exiled figures have succeeded in articulating a credible alternative capable of commanding broad-based consensus.
Attempts by individuals such as Reza Pahlavi to position themselves as symbolic leaders have exposed—rather than resolved—deep divisions within the opposition. While some Iranians, driven by exhaustion and despair, may view “any change” as preferable to the status quo, others remain deeply suspicious of his figure. For them, it is difficult to overlook that the 1979 Revolution, which produced the current political order, originated in a mass movement explicitly aimed at dismantling a monarchy—one headed by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the father of the current claimant—widely perceived at the time as corrupt, authoritarian, and externally dependent. Equally salient was the role of the Shah’s regime in the aftermath of the 1953 Anglo-American-backed coup, which overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh following his attempt to nationalize Iran’s oil industry.
Other oppositional forces have been silenced throughout the years: Mir Hossein Mousavi, Iran’s Green Movement leader, remains under house arrest; Shirin Ebadi, the human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is in exile, to mention a few. This, however, should not be understood as a lack of grassroots organizations. As Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, a lecturer at St. Andrew University, has noted, Iran today possesses a rich and variegated landscape of grassroots activism, encompassing labour syndicates, Kurdish civil society organizations, journalists, lawyers, students, and women’s networks. Yet decades of repression have systematically prevented these actors from coalescing into a coordinated national force with meaningful oppositional leverage. Activist networks remain fragmented, localized, and vulnerable, largely incapable of translating street mobilization into sustained national organization.
Underneath this organizational dimension lies a deeper societal fragmentation. While demands for a less corrupt, less repressive, and more democratic system enjoy broad resonance, the means of achieving such change are contested. These tensions reflect deeper structural divisions within Iranian society. At least in its initial phase, the protests included alongside organizations such as the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, also—in a sort of dispute internal to the system—conservative forces. As noted by Tehran University Professor Sadegh Zibakalam, these included groups close to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who mobilized against the reformist front accusing them of complicity in economic corruption and in the rise of a new oligarchic elite.
Decades of economic liberalization, combined with sanctions and corruption, have produced stark inequalities and a visible divide between a new wealthy elite and a struggling majority. Inflation and declining social mobility have eroded the revolutionary promise of social justice, particularly for younger, educated Iranians facing unemployment or underemployment. At the same time, political and ideological polarization has intensified. Ethnic diversity further complicates the picture. Iran’s mosaic of Persians, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Lurs, Arabs, Baloch, and other groups is marked by long-standing grievances and uneven development. These divisions—often marginalized or actively suppressed by the central state throughout modern Iranian history—hinder the formation of a unified political front. Recent economic shocks, geopolitical setbacks, and violent repression have further intensified these internal tensions rather than resolving them.
The violent repression of the current protests has undeniably expanded the segment of society that challenges the authorities’ legitimacy and asks for regime change. At the same time, the authorities’ framing of protesters as foreign agents or terrorists affiliated with ISIS has further widened the gulf between the state and its supporters and large sections of the population. Yet on both factions, this cohesiveness appears more temporary and instrumental than substantive. For the protestors in particular, unity against the Islamic Republic has so far failed to translate into an organized opposition; the combination of these internal and external divisions among the two factions risks, in the long term, escalating into civil conflict with destabilizing consequences for both the country and the wider region.
Regardless of the outcome, the current events represent a breaking point in the history of the Islamic Republic, exposing the cumulative effects of economic exhaustion, geopolitical contraction, and violent repression. While the breadth and intensity of the mobilization mark a significant rupture, the absence of unified leadership, a coherent political project, and cross-cutting organizational capacity limits the protesters’ ability to translate mass dissent into durable political change. At the same time, the state’s reliance on violent repression and securitized narratives may temporarily contain unrest, but only at the cost of further eroding legitimacy and deepening existing societal fractures.
It is in this stalemate—between a weakened yet coercively resilient regime and a socially expansive yet fragmented opposition—that the international community plays a key role in shaping internal developments. For external actors, particularly the United States and Israel, interpreting the protests as an opportunity to initiate war aimed at regime change would constitute a profound misreading of Iranian society and would ignore the traumatic precedents of civil war in Syria and foreign interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, this does not preclude a role for external pressure: diplomatic and legal measures aimed at supporting democratic demands and accountability may resonate more strongly than coercive force.
Cover photo: Iranians gather while blocking a street during a protest in Tehran, Iran on January 9, 2026. (Photo by Mahsa / Middle East Images via AFP)
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to see and interact with our latest contents.
If you like our stories, events, publications and dossiers, sign up for our newsletter (twice a month).