Iran has entered yet another nationwide uprising—the fourth in less than a decade. Each wave of unrest since 2017 has had a different immediate trigger: sharp price increases for basic goods in 2017, fuel price hikes in 2019, and the killing of Jina/Mahsa Amini in 2022. The latest unrest began on December 28, 2025, when merchants and shopkeepers in Tehran’s historic bazaar staged a protest over the rapid collapse of the national currency.
The protest quickly spread across the country, met with violent repression and a near-total communications blackout. In just over two weeks, protests have been reported in nearly 200 towns and cities across all 31 provinces, tens of thousands have been arrested and more than 2,500 protesters have been killed.
While each wave of unrest since 2017 has been triggered by different immediate events, these uprisings are the cumulative outcome of two structural forces that have reshaped Iranian society over the past three decades: the Islamic Republic’s adoption of neoliberal economic policies since the early 1990s and the intensification of international sanctions, particularly after 2012.
These forces have steadily eroded living standards, dismantled social protections, and concentrated economic and political power in the hands of a narrow elite, setting the stage for recurring uprisings.
Structural roots of unrest
Following the Iran–Iraq War, the state confronted a deep economic crisis. Beginning in the early 1990s, it pursued market-friendly reforms under the banner of liberalisation. Labour protections were dismantled, subsidies for food and fuel were cut, welfare programs were retrenched, and state assets were privatised. While these reforms were presented as pathways to growth, they primarily benefited a narrow elite, leaving the majority of Iranians economically precarious.
Privatisation was particularly pernicious. Early sell-offs (1991-2005) transferred state firms to banks and pension funds under the guise of private ownership, but in practice were controlled by bureaucrats.
More significantly, under Ahmadinejad’s presidency (2005–13), vast public assets were handed to companies linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and religious-revolutionary foundations (bonyads), such as the Mostazafan Foundation, the Imam Reza Shrine Foundation and Setad. These entities, nominally “public, non-governmental”, fused military and economic power, creating a dominant bloc that I refer to as the military–bonyad complex, closely aligned with the Supreme Leader.
Meanwhile, labour market deregulation and subsidy cuts devastated workers and the poor. Temporary contracts, which were just 6% of the workforce in 1990, rose to nearly 97% by 2021, institutionalising precarity.
Subsidy cuts for basic food and energy hit rural areas and smaller cities hardest, while unemployment among young people, especially university graduates, soared. This is particularly significant in a country where, as of 2025, the median age is just 32.
By the late 2010s, roughly half of all unemployed Iranians were university graduates, highlighting the growing economic precarity of an educated youth population.
Furthermore, external pressures compounded these domestic vulnerabilities. Although international sanctions were first introduced in 2006, initially targeting individuals and institutions linked to Iran’s nuclear program, they quickly expanded in scope.
After 2012, the US and EU implemented unprecedented measures that, for the first time, directly targeted Iran’s oil exports and banking system, striking at the heart of the national economy.
The US “maximum pressure” campaign launched after 2018 sought to reduce Iran’s oil sales to zero and cut the country off entirely from the global financial system. These sanctions deepened the economic crisis, triggering currency collapse, runaway inflation, falling GDP, mass unemployment, and widespread poverty, with ordinary Iranians, especially the poor and working classes, bearing the heaviest burden.
Together, neoliberal economic reforms and international sanctions systematically dismantled social protections, concentrated wealth and power in a narrow, military-aligned elite, and eroded the material foundations of popular support.
The recurring uprisings of 2017, 2019, 2022, and now 2026 are not isolated incidents but manifestations of these underlying structural pressures.
The uprising is familiar, the regime’s weakness is not
Just as the current protests are rooted in the same long-term structural pressures, the state’s response is also familiar: violent repression, mass arrests, and intimidation. What distinguishes this moment, however, is not the source of popular anger but what the protests reveal about the regime’s political position. Iran now faces a more advanced crisis of state power, driven by three factors: a weakened regional standing, the collapse of any credible negotiation horizon with the US, and emerging cracks in its traditional social base.
First, Iran has pursued an assertive regional policy, especially after 2011, expanding the “axis of resistance” that included the Syrian government, Iraqi Shia militias, Hezbollah, Yemen’s Ansar Allah, and select Palestinian groups. This network aimed to counter US influence in the Middle East and project Iranian power. But in recent years, Israel’s military campaigns have significantly undermined key regional allies: Hezbollah and Hamas.
The fall of Assad’s regime, despite massive Iranian support, represents another major strategic blow. In addition, during the recent 12-day war with Israel, targeted Israeli assassinations of Iranian commanders and nuclear scientists, combined with US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, have further diminished Iran’s regional prestige. The regime’s declining external power undermines its internal legitimacy, emboldening domestic dissent.
Second, years of on-and-off negotiations now appear less like genuine diplomacy than a strategy for buying time in the eyes of many ordinary Iranians. Since the US withdrawal from the Nuclear Deal in 2018, Iran has engaged in a series of indirect talks with Washington, but the Supreme Leader and military leadership remain unwilling to accept the US long-list of demands regarding the nuclear and missile programs and regional policy.
Meeting these demands would have undermined the power base of the military–bonyad complex and required fundamental changes to the state’s strategic direction. For many Iranians, this has reinforced the belief that meaningful compromise is impossible under the current power structure, even if a president with reformist rhetoric, such as Pezeshkian last year, comes to office.
The perception that negotiation is futile makes domestic protest the primary avenue for political change.
Thirdly, cracks are emerging within the regime’s traditional social base. While elections in semi-authoritarian Iran do not measure genuine consent, turnout still signals political trends. In the last presidential election in July 2024, participation fell to 39.9%, and the hardline candidate aligned with the Supreme Leader secured only about 22.5% of the total electorate—roughly the regime’s historical core support.
Yet, the current unrest began in the bazaar and has spread to small towns and provincial centres, showing growing disaffection among groups the state has long relied on, including bazaar merchants and state-employed provincial lower-middle classes.
Taken together, these shifts suggest a deeper political crisis. The regime may suppress this round in the short term, but the foundations of authority are narrowing.
The limits of coercion
A revolutionary rupture is not inevitable. The Islamic Republic still wields formidable coercive power and may suppress dissent in the short term, with not only the IRGC and Basij (paramilitary volunteer militia) but also the national army—an unusual show of loyalty in domestic protests—publicly declaring allegiance to the Supreme Leader and the regime.
However, repression alone is increasingly incapable of restoring stability. The social buffers that once absorbed unrest are eroding, reformist avenues have long evaporated, diplomatic options are widely seen as exhausted, and regional power projection can no longer compensate for domestic failure.
The question, then, is no longer whether protests will return, but how long the state can govern through coercion alone. The current uprising signals a qualitative shift, not because it guarantees transformation, but because it exposes the narrowing foundations of the regime’s authority.
Kayhan Valadbaygi is a Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam and CEO of Middle East Risk & Reform Advisory.
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