Iran Grapples With Protests…Again
By Peter Zeihan
Iran is in the midst of one of the most serious rounds of public unrest since November 2019, when a hike in fuel prices sent potentially hundreds of thousands of Iranians out into the streets. Dozens of structures were burned during those protests, statues of regime figures pulled down, and plenty of calls for death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the Islamic regime itself. Outside observers estimate over a thousand Iranian citizens were killed, and over ten thousand were arrested. Current protests are being met with the same harsh response by regime security forces, even if we have not yet reached the scale of brutality seen in 2019. In January of 2020, Iranian military forces shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, setting off another wave of intense national protests. Iran has had a series of significant protests movements since then, sparked by everything from the country’s abysmal handling of the COVID-19 epidemic, to runaway inflation, drought and lack of water in places like Khuzestan, etc.
