Iranians Have Had Enough

A wave of protests started by shopkeepers swept through Tehran in December. Iranians have had such a terrible year—facing such a decline in living standards and such a sense of political impasse—that no one was terribly surprised when demonstrations filled the streets.

I asked one Iranian student why she had taken part in the street protests. “Yeah, why should we protest?” she replied sarcastically. “After all, we have it so good!”

The immediate spark for the protests was a sharp decline in the value of the Iranian currency. At one point last week, a U.S. dollar traded for almost 1.5 million rials, having lost more than half its value in a year. As recently as 2021, a dollar cost around 250,000 rials and, only a decade ago, around 30,000. This continuous decline has slashed savings, destroyed the Iranian middle class, and inflicted real suffering on the working classes. The protests began on Sunday with merchants who rely on importing electrical goods and find that very few can now afford them. But they’ve quickly mushroomed—as did previous rounds did in 2017, 2019, and 2022—spreading to cities in provinces such as Hamedan, Isfahan, and Lorestan, and drawing in students, pensioners, and members of Gen Z.

Like previous waves of demonstrations, the protests have quickly acquired a political character. Protesters have chanted, “Death to the dictator,” targeting the octogenarian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has held the top post since 1989 with little accountability. As a statement read out by students at Tehran’s Beheshti University put it: “This criminal system has taken our future hostage for 47 years. It won’t be changed with reform or with false promises.”