On the afternoon of the 28 December in a Tehran electronics bazaar, shopkeepers (known as bazaaris) shuttered their shops and walked out, outraged at a planned gas price rise and crippled at the continuing slide in the value of the Iranian currency and the government’s powerlessness to shepherd Iran’s economy towards something better than corruption, unemployment and inflationary cycles. Tehran’s Grand Bazaar was quick to follow suit. A day or so later, several of Tehran’s most prestigious universities staged demonstrations. Smaller cities and towns have since taken up the baton of resistance, with government offices attacked and people openly calling for Khamenei’s death and the return of the Pahlavi dynasty, at a time when one of Iran’s major international allies, Venezuela, is in the process of having its state dismantled by US airstrikes and military operations. The fall of the Maduro regime has the distinct potential to galvanise the Iranian opposition as yet another of Tehran’s foreign policy pillars comes tumbling down.

The fall of the Maduro regime has the distinct potential to galvanise the Iranian opposition

Yet as the protests enter their sixth day, it’s important to stress that daily life in Iranian cities large and small continues relatively uninterrupted. ‘It’s not yet on the same scale as it was in 2022 when millions joined in the Women, Life Freedom protests,’ one Iranian said to me yesterday. And although some of Tehran’s bazaars remain shuttered and protests are continuing, Friday prayers across Iran went ahead as planned, showing that for the time being, the Islamic Republic remains in control. But as the regime marks the anniversary of the death of Qassem........

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