Economic desperation fuels Iran’s latest protests

The protests that have been sweeping Iran for the past week have once again raised the question: "Is this the first step toward regime change?" However, posing such a question without grasping the background of events on the ground often leads to fundamentally flawed analyses.

To fully understand the nuances of the issue, the subject must be examined in layers. Iran has been in a state of crisis that has intensified since 2016 and escalated significantly after 2018, paralleling the "maximum pressure" policy during Trump's first term. This crisis is often misunderstood by Western analysts unfamiliar with the realities on the ground, requiring closer examination of the background.

Economic crisis

Iran confronts a problem of unplanned urbanization that began in the 1960s and has intensified to this day. Rapid rural-to-urban migration has emptied villages and decimated the agriculture and livestock sectors, resulting in a massive population struggling to survive in the cities by cramming into shantytowns. The established elites label this internal migrant mass with the pejorative term "shahrestani" (provincial). While this exclusion deepens social fault lines, the chaotic growth of the urban periphery has been further intensified by the influx of millions of Afghan refugees since the 1980s. The cumulative result is a fragmented society marked by mutual distrust, resentment and deep unhappiness.

Urban infrastructure can no longer sustain this population load.