‘Mullahs must leave’: Iran gripped by massive unrest in three years

Geneva: The streets of numerous Iranian cities and towns have been in disarray for the past two days. The largest demonstration against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s religious rule in three years is taking place as the Iranian rial fell to over 42,000 versus the US dollar and inflation increased to over 42%.

“A lot of films are pouring in from Iran, showing people yelling ‘death to the dictatorship’ and ‘Mullahs must leave Iran’ in unison in the streets. Iranian-American novelist and journalist Masih Alinejad wrote on X, “This is the voice of a people who do not want the Islamic Republic.”

Iran’s clerical regime, which is already having difficulty recovering from US and Israeli strikes on its nuclear facilities as well as the effects of Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy, which labeled a nuclear Iran under radical Shia clerics as an intolerable risk, is now facing severe challenges due to the financial hardship and breakdown of law and order in a nation of more than 92 million people. Therefore, the question is whether the current turmoil is the political leverage US has long sought, or if it is just a domestic reaction.

In the meantime, a picture circulated by reliable Iranian expats depicts a man sitting still in the middle of a Tehran roadway while regime forces on motorbikes approach to put an end to demonstrations. The picture of the lone man was compared to the famous photograph of China’s violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square

protesters in 1989.