Iran today feels like a country stretched to its limits, economically exhausted at home and strategically weakened abroad, yet governed by a system that still believes force and fear can substitute for consent. The protests spreading across its cities and provinces are not sudden eruptions but the release of pressure that has been building for years. Inflation that refuses to come down, a currency that has collapsed into near meaninglessness, and a population that feels cut off from opportunity have combined into something more dangerous than any organised opposition: widespread despair. When the rial slides past 1.4 million to the dollar, it is not an abstract statistic. It is the price of bread doubling again, rent becoming unaffordable, and savings evaporating overnight. The state’s response—live fire, mass arrests, internet shutdowns—signals not confidence, but fear that the old methods of control are losing their grip.
What makes this moment different from earlier waves of unrest is how little patience remains. The demonstrations may have begun with shopkeepers and workers protesting prices and fuel hikes, but they have quickly taken on a political edge. This has happened before, most notably after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, when anger over police brutality turned into a broader rejection of the system itself. The slogans now echo that earlier uprising, but the context is harsher. Iran’s economy is weaker, sanctions have returned with full force, and the sense that life will somehow improve has largely vanished. Even the regime’s usual tactic of waiting out protests appears less effective. When Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warns that “rioters must be put in their place,” it lands differently in a country where many feel they have already lost everything worth protecting.
Externally, the timing could hardly be worse for Tehran. The image of Iran as the unchallenged patron of a powerful “Axis of Resistance” has taken a severe beating since the Israel–Hamas war began in 2023. Hamas has been militarily crushed, Hezbollah has lost much of its senior leadership, and the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria has removed a critical ally and corridor of influence. Even the Houthis, once a useful pressure point in the Red Sea, have been repeatedly struck by US and Israeli forces. Iran is still disruptive, still capable of causing regional pain, but it no longer looks ascendant. That matters domestically. For years, the regime sold foreign adventures as proof of strength and ideological purpose. Today, many Iranians see only the cost—money spent abroad while subsidies shrink at home and basic goods slip out of reach.
Into this volatile mix has stepped Donald Trump, once again using Iran as a stage for muscular rhetoric. His warning that the United States would “come to the rescue” if peaceful protesters are violently crushed is deliberately ambiguous, especially after the dramatic US capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. For Tehran, the message is unsettling precisely because it is unclear. Direct American intervention remains unlikely, but the threat adds to a sense of siege within the Iranian leadership. It also feeds a familiar narrative: that protests are foreign-instigated plots rather than homegrown revolts. Yet blaming outsiders cannot erase the reality that hundreds of demonstrations have erupted across all 31 provinces, involving people with no obvious political affiliations beyond anger at their own government.
Hovering over everything is Iran’s nuclear programme, the issue that has shaped its relationship with the West for decades. Tehran insists its ambitions are peaceful, but years of enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels and curbing cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency have eroded trust. The June airstrikes by the United States and Israel on Iranian nuclear sites marked a dangerous escalation, one that underscored how thin the margin for miscalculation has become. Iranian officials now signal openness to talks, even claiming enrichment has stopped, but credibility is in short supply on all sides. Sanctions relief remains distant, and without it, economic recovery is a fantasy. The irony is painful: the nuclear programme, once framed as a symbol of national pride, has become one of the central reasons ordinary Iranians are struggling to afford food.
At its core, the crisis confronting Iran is not just about protests or geopolitics, but about legitimacy. The Islamic Republic was born from revolution, sustained by ideology and coercion, and periodically recalibrated through controlled participation. That model is fraying. A young population that feels globally connected but domestically trapped is less willing to accept sermons about sacrifice, especially when those delivering them appear insulated from the consequences. The chants praising figures like Reza Pahlavi are less about monarchist nostalgia than about desperation for any alternative. Whether this wave of unrest topples the system or is brutally suppressed, it leaves scars that will not fade easily. Iran may yet survive this moment, but survival is not the same as stability. A state that relies on shutting down the internet to govern has already lost the argument with its own people, even if it still controls the streets.