Introduction
Iran’s latest nationwide protests, ignited by a collapsing currency and spiraling prices, have rapidly evolved into one of the most serious challenges the Islamic Republic has faced since 1979. This report situates the 2025–26 unrest in three intersecting transformations: a structural economic crisis that narrows the regime’s room for maneuver; a digitally networked, cross-class protest coalition shaped by the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising; and a fragmented but information-rich public sphere that accelerates mobilization while impeding unified leadership. It assesses how these dynamics interact with succession uncertainty, hardened repression, and shifting international calculations to place Iran’s political order at a dangerous inflection point.
Mass protests in Iran in 2025–26 are rooted in a deep structural economic breakdown that has fused with long‑running political, social, and generational grievances, transforming episodic unrest into a sustained challenge to the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy. What began with merchants’ strikes in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar over the collapsing rial, soaring inflation, and sudden price spikes in basic goods such as cooking oil and chicken has spread rapidly to over a hundred cities and towns, including poorer and ethnically marginalized provinces like Ilam and Lorestan [1][3][4][5]. These protests now clearly transcend economic complaints, with slogans such as “death to the dictator” and “death to Khamenei” signaling a direct rejection of the entire governing system rather than calls for piecemeal reform [1][4].
The backdrop is a “structural economic collapse” driven by years of mismanagement, corruption, sanctions, and a political economy that prioritizes regional power projection and elite enrichment over domestic welfare [2][4]. Large segments of society see the regime diverting scarce resources to allies and proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas instead of stabilizing prices, protecting jobs, or shoring up basic services [1][5]. Both working‑class and middle‑class households have been pushed into long‑term precarity, with shortages, unemployment, and environmental crisis falling heaviest on peripheral regions and marginalized groups [2][3]. Even officials who advocate economic reforms acknowledge that they are unlikely to materially improve daily life or restore trust in the state’s capacity to deliver stability [1][4].
The social profile of protesters marks a decisive shift from earlier cycles of contention. In contrast to the largely urban, middle‑class, election‑focused Green Movement of 2009, today’s mobilization draws heavily on working‑class Iranians, small traders, contract oil workers, teachers, pensioners, and residents of neglected provinces [1][3]. Generational turnover is central: a very high share of those arrested are under 25 and have no direct memory of 2009; they are largely disillusioned with the failed reformist project and view the system as irredeemable [1]. Their demands are not about “counting the votes” or empowering sidelined reformists under house arrest, but about a wholesale end to authoritarian rule and compulsory social controls, building on the gender‑equality and bodily autonomy claims crystallized in the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising [2][3].
These protests are taking place in an “information‑rich, leader‑poor” environment. Since the revolution, Iran has been transformed by satellite TV, exiled media, social platforms, encrypted messaging, and citizen journalism, creating an intensely mediated public sphere where information about abuses, corruption, and protests circulates widely and rapidly [1][6]. This dense information ecosystem undercuts the state’s ability to monopolize narratives or conceal violence, but it also fragments strategy: there is no single opposition leadership or coherent program capable of channeling mass anger into institutionalized political organization. Protest networks are decentralized, digitally coordinated, and capable of igniting nationwide actions on short notice—“protests everywhere”—yet they struggle to sustain momentum or negotiate power transitions [1][6][5].
The regime’s response combines hardened coercion with sophisticated narrative control. Security forces—particularly the Revolutionary Guards and Basij—rely on lethal force, mass arrests, and extensive internet shutdowns to disrupt organizing, restrict access to medical and legal aid, and prevent documentation of abuses [3][4]. Dozens have been killed in the opening stages of the latest protests, among them minors, with thousands detained [3][4]. Alongside physical repression, authorities deploy “narrative coercion”: pressuring families of slain protesters to accept official stories that their relatives were regime loyalists or died in accidents, often conditioning the return of bodies or permission for burial on compliance [3]. This strategy aims to neutralize martyrdom narratives that have historically sustained long‑term mobilization and cross‑generational memory in Iran.
Simultaneously, the state attempts to firewall “economic” grievances from explicitly political dissent. Officials and state media label those who call for systemic change as foreign‑backed “rioters,” framing crackdowns as security operations against external conspiracies rather than repression of citizens [3]. This is coupled with selective, short‑term economic band‑aids—subsidy tweaks, wage promises, or targeted relief—to split merchants and workers from youth activists. But the depth and persistence of economic crisis, together with visible elite privilege and sanctions leakage, make these tactics less effective than in previous cycles [1][2][4].
Underlying these dynamics is a profound legitimacy and succession crisis within the ruling elite. Since the brutal suppression of the 2022 protests, trust between state and society has eroded further, and cracks across political factions have widened [2][3]. The looming question of leadership succession—without a clear, charismatic, or broadly accepted heir—intensifies intra‑elite competition and empowers institutions like the Leader’s Office and the Revolutionary Guards, which are likely to dominate any eventual transition [2][4]. In this context, mass protests are perceived not merely as policy disputes but as existential threats to a brittle power structure, increasing the regime’s propensity to escalate repression rather than compromise.
International and regional factors complicate the picture. Iran’s domestic crisis is interwoven with its role in the broader Iran–Saudi–U.S. strategic triangle, proxy conflicts, and negotiations over its nuclear program [2][5][7]. External powers often prioritize nuclear containment, energy stability, or regional de‑escalation over human rights and democratic demands, reinforcing popular perceptions that the international system props up the regime at the expense of Iranian society [2][3]. At the same time, heightened regional confrontation raises the risk that Tehran will justify intensified domestic repression as necessary for national security, while activists fear that overt foreign backing could delegitimize their movement in the eyes of some compatriots or provide a pretext for crackdowns [3][5].
Across these analyses, a consensus emerges that Iran’s “forces of change”—a broad, cross‑class, cross‑gender, and increasingly cross‑regional coalition—are not limited by awareness, courage, or numbers; in many respects they constitute a societal majority [1][3]. The central structural obstacle is the absence of a trusted, popular leadership and organizational infrastructure capable of converting repeated protest waves into coherent political agency and negotiated transition. As a result, the most plausible near‑ to medium‑term trajectory is one of recurrent cycles: explosive uprisings triggered by economic shocks or symbolic abuses; harsh repression; deepening moral, religious, and political delegitimization of the regime; and incremental erosion of the state’s ability to govern without pervasive coercion [2][4].
What appears increasingly unlikely is a simple reversion to the pre‑2022 or even pre‑December 2025 status quo. Even if the Islamic Republic survives this protest wave, it does so with shrinking reservoirs of legitimacy, widening social mistrust, and growing dependence on violence and information control. Each subsequent round of unrest, driven by structural economic fragility and a politically awakened, digitally connected younger generation, is likely to be more radical, less containable, and more consequential for Iran’s long‑term political trajectory than the last [2][4][5].
Conclusion
The 2025–26 protests mark an inflection point where structural economic collapse, long-building legitimacy erosion, and succession uncertainty collide. What began as a bazaar strike over the rial’s freefall has widened into a cross-class, youth-heavy, and geographically dispersed challenge that now openly targets the system rather than its managers. An information-rich but leader-poor society can ignite nationwide dissent faster than the state can contain narratives, yet still struggles to convert upheaval into organization. Whatever the immediate outcome, the Islamic Republic emerges weaker, more coercion-dependent, and less able to restore the political, economic, and social foundations of its rule.
Sources
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/irans-economic-crisis-political-discontent-threaten-regime/a-75350062
[2] https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2023/nov/17/iran-2024-political-challenges
[3] https://bti-project.org/en/reports/country-report/IRN
[4] https://www.faf.ae/home/2026/1/8/iran-on-the-precipice-economic-collapse-and-the-islamic-republics-race-against-history
[5] https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/spreading-protests-expose-legitimacy-crisis-for-irans-leadership
[6] https://www.stimson.org/2026/in-iran-protests-information-spreads-faster-than-organization/
[7] https://shafaq.com/en/Report/Iran-s-protests-between-economic-crisis-and-political-contestation
[8] https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601095664
[9] https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/09/world/iran-protests-explained-intl
[10] https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/ayatollahs-regime-crumbling-michael-doran
[11] https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/bz60d459g
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Saudi_Arabia_proxy_war
[13] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/how-iranprotests-compare-with-the-2009-green-movement/
[14] https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/iran-this-time-is-different-deadly-combination-internal-and-external-threats-by-vali-nasr-2026-01
[15] https://www.bushcenter.org/publications/the-u-s-and-democracies-around-the-world-must-stand-with-the-people-of-iran/
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020
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