The latest demonstrations in Iran, now in their fourth consecutive day, mark a significant escalation in the Islamic Republic’s internal pressure cooker. While not yet a regime-ending event, the unrest drawing upon a combination of economic collapse, post-war fatigue, and eroding legitimacy could begin a cascade toward regime collapse.
The spark came on December 28, 2025, when merchants in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar closed their shops to protest the rial’s depreciation alongside an inflation rate surpassing 42 percent. The rial’s free fall has priced essential imports out of reach, igniting strikes among bazaar vendors, truck drivers, gold and furniture merchants, and peripheral commercial networks. By December 30, the movement had spread to university campuses in Tehran, Mashhad, and other cities, where students have fused economic grievances with explicit political demands.
The rial’s free fall has priced essential imports out of reach, igniting strikes.
The drivers of these protests are cumulative: fiscal mismanagement; diversion of resources to proxy militias in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq; lingering damage from the June 2025 Israel-Iran war and international sanctions that choke Iran’s access to global markets. Earlier December flashpoints—protests in Mashhad following the death of human rights lawyer Khosrow Alikordi and water-shortage strikes in Yasuj—served as precursors, linking localized issues to a nationwide narrative of regime corruption and incompetence.
This pattern aligns with precedents in which economic pain catalyzes political mobilization, but the 2025 iteration stands out for its cross-class character: traditionally regime-supportive conservative bazaaris now join secular students, laborers, and ethnic minorities in rejecting the status quo.
The unrest has engulfed at least a dozen major cities—Tehran, Mashhad, Hamadan, Malard, Arak, Izeh, Kermanshah, Rasht, Shush, and others—with bazaar closures paralyzing commercial arteries. Real-time geolocation and open-source video indicate crowds in the thousands at individual sites, though regime-imposed internet restrictions obscure exact numbers, with strikes extending to gold, furniture, and mobile-phone markets. Slogans have evolved rapidly from bread-and-butter complaints such as “We can’t afford bread” to anti-regime chants like “Death to the dictator,” “Until the mullah is shrouded,” and even calls for former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to return.
The participant base is broad: women, youth, ethnic minorities, retirees, and workers. This intergenerational and cross-strata composition strengthens resilience but hinders centralized coordination. As during the 2022-2023 Woman, Life, Freedom movement, decentralized networks leveraging VPNs and encrypted messaging apps maintains momentum.
Regime Response
Tehran has responded with a familiar blend of calibrated violence and tactical feints. Security forces—Basij militias, riot police, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps units—have deployed tear gas, live rounds, and birdshot in hotspots such as Hamadan and Izeh, producing reports of fatalities and dozens of arrests. In a televised address, President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledged “legitimate demands” and floated the possibility of dialogue with protest representatives—a classic regime ploy to buy time and divide the opposition without conceding substantive power.
Tehran has responded with a familiar blend of calibrated violence and tactical feints.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps communications indicate preparations for intensified crackdowns, including the potential deployment of foreign mercenaries such as Afghan Fatemiyoun brigades, to compensate for reluctant or depleted domestic forces. The regime’s doctrinal commitment to maximum force remains unchanged: From the 2009 Green Movement to the 2019 fuel protests, where over 1,500 were killed, and the 2022 Mahsa demonstrations, Tehran has demonstrated readiness to use lethal violence, mass detentions, internet blackouts, and targeted eliminations to preserve the Islamic Revolution. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij, hardened by regional conflicts, possess sophisticated crowd-control capabilities, including sniper teams and chemical agents.
Simultaneously, cyber operations are in overdrive, with troll farms and state media labeling the protests as foreign-orchestrated “sedition.” Public exhaustion with such narratives, however, limits their effectiveness. Low morale among mid-level enforcers and rumors of defection signals in provincial garrisons represent latent vulnerabilities should the unrest endure into the new year.
Past Precedent
The December 2025 protests diverge significantly from the 1999 student movement, the 2009 Green Movement, and the 2022-2023 Woman, Life, Freedom movement. The 1999 student protests largely occurred on university campuses. It was elite-driven, reformist, and contained through targeted repression. The 2025 protests, in contrast, are economically driven, widespread, and involve commercial shutdowns rather than campus sit-ins.
The 2009 Green Movement erupted after a disputed presidential election. It mobilized millions of urban middle-class demonstrators, and organized marches lasting months, led by reformist politicians such as Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. The current wave lacks centralized leadership or an electoral pretext; it is decentralized, economically focused, and has moved quickly to confrontational rhetoric and economic strikes. Bazaar participation—a pillar of the regime’s traditional support base—marks a more profound systemic fracture.
Bazaar participation—a pillar of the regime’s traditional support base—marks a more profound systemic fracture.
The murder of Mahsa Amini triggered the 2022-2023 Woman, Life, Freedom movement, which was centered on gender oppression, violent, and sustained over months with women at the forefront of hijab defiance. The current protests, in contrast, are predominantly economic-focused. They feature bazaar-led economic leverage rather than youth- or women-led moral outrage, with less emphasis on cultural freedoms and more on immediate livelihood crises.
Foreign governments should exercise caution. Overt interference—whether through excessive public endorsements, funding, or amplified rhetoric—carries risks to the protesters. Historical experience shows that external rhetoric enables Tehran to unify hardliners, delegitimize protesters as foreign agents, and justify intensified repression. Foreign support for ideological or ethnic groups or external calls for regime change could alienate nationalist and conservative elements, including the bazaar community who remain wary of perceived external domination.
Logistical constraints—Tehran’s advanced surveillance and internet controls—limit the effectiveness of covert aid. Premature escalation rhetoric may also deter potential security-force defectors, who fear a post-regime power vacuum or foreign-imposed order. Instead, overt foreign actions should prioritize general human rights support and indirect, low-visibility measures: targeted sanctions on repressors, secure channels for independent journalism, and humanitarian assistance routed through neutral nongovernmental organizations to address economic drivers. Overreach risks transforming a domestic economic crisis into a siege mentality, thereby extending the regime’s survival horizon and complicating genuine democratic transitions.
What might the future hold?
Chants invoking Reza Pahlavi reflect symbolic appeal, but the regime’s security and intelligence wall so far limits the exiled opposition’s practical impact. Operating from abroad, the opposition lack on-the-ground organizational capacity and rely heavily on diaspora media and social amplification, which is helpful, but limited. Perceptions of foreign patronage enable the regime to paint the exiled opposition as detached elites or agents, alienating nationalists and leftists. Past failures—such as the Mojahedin-e Khalq’s insular structure and the unsuccessful 2023 Georgetown coalition—highlight the structural inability of exile groups to forge unified, indigenous leadership. Calls from the diaspora abroad can offer meaningful support, but only if they remain supportive rather than directive. Otherwise, they risk fragmenting momentum.
The protests so far lack the organizational depth to overthrow the regime—unlike 1979, when clerical networks mobilized the masses. However, sustained economic strikes could paralyze key sectors within weeks, potentially forcing concessions or exposing internal fractures. The wildcard remains Reza Pahlavi’s symbolic resonance: Monarchist undercurrents exist, but without serious domestic infrastructure, they remain aspirational.
External rhetoric may accelerate momentum, but regime propaganda could rally hardliners toward violent civil conflict.
Regime containment to suppress the protests remains the most likely outcome, as the regime deploys maximum force, mass arrests, and limited concessions to isolate and dismantle the protests. Combined with minor economic measures such as preserving or enhancing some subsidies and scapegoating corrupt officials, the regime likely believes unrest will dissipate within a few weeks. This outcome is favored by low defection rates in the security forces and the absence of centralized opposition leadership.
However, if strikes spread to critical infrastructure such as refineries and ports, and mid-level Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps defections materialize, the movement could cascade nationwide. External rhetoric may accelerate momentum, but regime propaganda could rally hardliners toward violent civil conflict.
Another scenario would be Pezeshkian’s dialogue producing superficial concessions such as aid packages, or prisoner releases to defuse tensions without altering power structures. Protester fatigue and regime pragmatism enables this path, though vocal criticism from exiled figures could harden domestic divisions.
The fight is ultimately Iran’s own. Foreign policymakers should prioritize covert support for civil society networks while avoiding public actions that alienate nationalists. Iran’s future will be determined internally; external actors must amplify—not hijack—indigenous momentum.
