Is this time different in Iran? |
On Thursday night, the Iran government cut off internet service and international calling in the country as anti-government protests broke out throughout the country. Videos that made it to social media showed large crowds marching through multiple cities and government buildings ablaze.
The most recent protests appeared to be in response to a call to take to the streets from Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the shah of Iran, who fled the country prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But protests have been spreading throughout the country since late December, spurred by public anger over the state of the economy. What began with merchants shuttering stores in the bazaar in Tehran, quickly spread to cities and rural areas throughout the country. Human rights groups say more than 40 people have been killed in the demonstrations and thousands detained.
Raising the stakes last week was President Donald Trump’s threat that the US was “locked and loaded” to intervene if the Iranian government killed protesters. It’s a threat Iranian leaders have to take seriously since the US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last June, not to mention the events that just transpired in Venezuela. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused protesters on Friday of “ruining their own streets to make the president of another country happy,” i.e., Trump.
The Iranian regime has managed to violently suppress rounds of mass protests before, from the “Green Movement” following the disputed election in 2009 to the “woman, life, freedom” protests that broke out after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in custody of the state’s morality police in 2022. Is there any reason to think that this time is different?
To get more clarity on that question, Vox spoke with Vali Nasr, professor of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a leading expert on Iran domestic politics and foreign policy. Born in Iran, Nasr served as a State Department adviser during the Obama administration and is the author of the recent book Iran’s Grand Strategy. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
When you watch what’s unfolding in Iran right now, what do you think distinguishes these protests from earlier periods of unrest we’ve seen in Iran such as the Mahsa Amini protests in 2022?
At least until Thursday, the scale of the protests did not approximate the Mahsa Amini protests, but last night they seemed to be much more prolific and spread across Iran in a much larger way and also grew very violent towards the end of the night, with burning of some government buildings
But I think the main thing that is much more significant is that these protests are coming at a time of war........