Fear of Tehran’s regime is receding in Iran |
Iran’s streets have again become a national ledger of grievance. The protest wave began in late December 2025 with a familiar trigger: A currency slide and prices that jumped faster than wages. Shopkeepers in Tehran were among the first to register the shock. Anger then travelled from bazaars to neighbourhoods, from the capital to provincial towns. Rail-drumming and pot-banging have turned protest into a daily pulse. Rights monitors speak of deaths and mass detentions, while a tightening communications clampdown makes precise counts hard to verify in real time.
Protest in the Islamic Republic has become part of the political calendar, returning whenever the gap widens between what the state promises and what it permits. The Green Movement of 2009 showed how quickly electoral hope can be converted into a security file. The fuel-price uprising of 2019 made clear how economic shock travels into political anger. The revolt of 2022, after the death of Mahsa Amini, pushed dignity into the centre of politics. Each wave ended with repression. Each also left behind a sharper sense of how........