In his first public remarks since mass protests broke out in Iran, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei sought to draw a sharp line between what he deemed the “legitimate” grievances of the bazaar and outright rebellion across the country. “We talk to protesters; the officials must talk to them, but there is no benefit to talking to rioters. Rioters must be put in their place,” he said.

The distinction was deliberate. Khamenei went on to praise the bazaar and its merchants as “among the most loyal sectors” of the Islamic Republic, insisting that the enemies of the state could not exploit the bazaar as a vehicle to confront the system itself.

Yet his words failed to mask the reality on the ground. Protests continue in the Tehran Bazaar, prompting authorities to deploy tear gas against demonstrators chanting antistate slogans, including ones targeting the supreme leader. The state’s attempt to symbolically separate the bazaar from the broader unrest failed in practice, exposing the limits of its narrative control.

Khamenei’s invocation of the revolutionary legacy of the bazaar is rooted in historical facts. The bazaar played a decisive role in the 1979 revolution that overthrew Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and remained aligned with conservative political networks in the following decades. But this historical loyalty no longer guarantees political quiescence.

Over the past 20 years, the economic standing of the bazaar has been steadily eroded by state favouritism towards the economic machinery of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and large religious-revolutionary foundations (bonyads), sanctions management, and chronic inflation. As a result, what was once a staunch base of the regime has become another casualty of........

© Al Jazeera