Name: Why Iran’s Protests Feel Different This Time
Uploaded: 2026-01-15T14:06:41.000Z
Duration: 8 min 48 s
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For nearly the past three weeks, protests have been rumbling on in Iran.

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Originally triggered by a decline in Iran's currency, the rial, the protests have since spiralled out into a wider push for regime change.

Unsurprisingly, they've been met with a brutal response from Iran's security services, and

at least 500 people have already been killed, although accurate estimates are hard to come by given the ongoing Internet blackout.

But despite the bloodshed, the protests have been accompanied by an optimistic sense that Iran,

even if it doesn't happen imminently, the regime's demise really does feel inevitable.

So in this video, we're going to explain why today's protests feel different to their predecessors and what might happen next.

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The first sense in which these protests feel different is they seem to enjoy remarkably widespread support across Iran.

For context, previous waves of protests were often driven by particular factions or sections of Iranian society.

The 2019 protests, for instance, were driven by poorer Iranians who were particularly upset at a reduction in fuel subsidies,

while the 2021 protests were driven by Iranians living in regions that were more acutely affected by water shortages, including most notably Khuzestan.

Even the 2022 protests, which were triggered by the killing of Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran's so-called morality police

and did spiral out into wider anti-regime protests, were originally driven by more liberal elements of Iranian society, especially in big cities like Tehran.

This essentially allowed the Islamic Republic to stem the protest by making targeted concessions.

After the 2019 protests, for instance, they introduced a new subsidy for poorer households.

In 2021, they redirected the water back to Khuzestan, exacerbating water shortages in other regions but stemming the immediate unrest.

And since the 2022 protest, the regime has relaxed enforcement of some of its more odious morality laws.

Women are no longer required to wear the hijab, and

at least in big cities like Tehran, public art and performances aren't uncommon.

And there were even a couple of bars serving alcohol, which would have been unimaginable only a few years ago.

To be clear, we're definitely not saying Tehran is some sort of liberal paradise, but

the regime has quietly permitted some degree of social liberalisation.

Previous protests were led by specific factions of Iranian society,

which meant the regime could at least partly appease the protesters by making concessions in specific areas.

These protests, however, seem to enjoy pretty widespread and even support across Iranian society.

They're squarely aimed at toppling the regime and they're happening pretty evenly across the entire country, in both rural and urban areas.

So why do these protests enjoy more widespread support than previous protests?

Well, as we see it, there are two obvious reasons.

The first is Iran's all encompassing economic crisis, which was actually the proximate trigger of these protests.

The which began amongst merchants in Iran's bazaars after the Central Bank allowed a massive depreciation of Iran's currency.

For context, Iran has been suffering through a slow-burning economic crisis since at least 2018,

when Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal or the JCPOA

and imposed further sanctions as part of his maximum pressure campaign against the regime.

Since then, year on year, inflation has averaged at about 30% and the real has consistently depreciated.

But the crisis has become particularly acute in the past year or so,

both because of Iran's war with Israel and the US and because of the recent fall in global oil prices,

which has been particularly bad for Iran, given oil revenues account for a majority of its foreign currency earnings.

Iran is now mired in a deep recession, with the World bank forecasting a contraction of 1.7% in 2025 and then 2.8% in 2026.

At the same time, inflation has risen in recent months, peaking at a new high of about 50% in October.

Unsurprisingly, this combination of recession and inflation,

all exacerbated by chronic corruption in government, has hurt basically every Iranian household,

which is why these protests enjoy support across the economic spectrum in Iran.

The second reason that these protests enjoy widespread support,

which we mentioned in our previous video on this topic, is that the regime has been strategically embarrassed.

The Ayatollah and his clerical cronies used to justify much of their political and economic repression,

on the grounds that this was all necessary to protect Iran against Israel and or the us.

But they've utterly failed in this respect.

Iran's proxy network, which was supposed to deter Israel or the US from a direct attack on Iran, has fallen apart.

Iran's main regional ally, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, was suddenly ousted a year and a bit ago,

and Iran's military was unable to defend against the Israeli and American air assault we saw last year.

This strategic failure was very visible to ordinary Iranians.

Israeli missiles were literally landing in Tehran while the Ayatollah was hiding in a bunker.

This means that the regime no longer has the excuse it once did for exercising its repressive apparatus.

And there aren't many Iranians defending the regime on pragmatic or strategic grounds anymore.

So that's the first way in which these protests feel different.

They do seem to enjoy wider and more even support than usual.

The second way in which they feel different is that they're coming on the back of the regime, making certain concessions.

after the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests, the regime quietly made a number of concessions,

including, most notably, permitting a degree of social liberalisation, something they'd previously refused to even countenance.

This was clearly in the hopes of appeasing more liberal minded Iranians.

But history suggests that once they start making concessions, autocratic regimes are usually on their way out.

Most obviously, Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika,

essentially concessions to a Soviet public demanding more freedom, preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union by barely a couple of years.

Similarly, in East Germany, the GDR legalised certain opposition groups and relaxed its trade and travel restrictions in late 1989, only months before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The third way in which these protests feel different is there's more focus on candidates who might succeed the Ayatollah,

especially the eldest son of the last Shah, Reza Pahlavi, who is a polarising but singular figure amongst the Iranian opposition.

This is not to say that Pahlavi is likely to succeed the Ayatollah.

He lives in the US without a ground game in Iran.

But his apparent relevance reflects both the fact that the protests are squarely focused on toppling the regime and that it feels more possible than it once did.

Now, to be clear, we're not saying these protests will definitely succeed.

And it's worth keeping in mind that the regime has survived recurrent protests since, really, the early 2010s.

Nonetheless, today's protests do feel different in certain respects.

And more and more Iranians are apparently thinking about what might come after the Ayatollah.

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