The New Year demonstrations in Iran came at the end of a year marked by war, economic strain, and political uncertainty.

In 2025, Israel launched a 12-day attack on Iran, assassinating senior military leaders and targeting military and economic infrastructure. The assault was followed by US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz.

As the year closed, protests erupted in the capital, Tehran, and in cities across central and southwestern Iran, beginning in the final week of 2025 and continuing into the first days of 2026.

These protests were not unprecedented. Iranian society has witnessed thousands of demonstrations since the mid-1990s, varying in scale and levels of participation. Over the years, the drivers of these demonstrations have differed, ranging from restrictions on social and political freedoms to the deterioration of economic conditions.

In Iran, recurring protests are shaped by the interaction between domestic politics, governance, foreign policy, and the impact of sanctions, which together influence both the emergence of dissent and the state’s response to it, particularly amid sustained sanctions and ongoing tensions with Israel and the United States.

The protests that closed the year followed a strike by merchants and bazaar owners over a sharp decline in purchasing power. This accelerated decline was driven by rising inflation, reflected in the falling value of the Iranian rial, which lost the equivalent of about 50 percent of its value, and by an increase in unemployment to 7.5 percent.

This was not the first time economic grievances had sparked unrest. In 2008, following an increase in the rate of value-added tax, the bazaar erupted in protest, forcing the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to retreat from implementing the measure.

More limited demonstrations followed in 2010, after the Ahmadinejad........

© Al Jazeera