What the Hell Is Happening in Iran?

[Boats]

What the Hell Is Happening in Iran?
By: Chas Danner 12-30-17 2:30 PM
RE: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...g-in-iran.html

Iranian students protest at the University of Tehran during a demonstration driven by anger over economic problems, in the capital Tehran on Saturday. Students protested in a third day of widespread demonstrations sparked by anger over Iran’s economic problems, videos on social media showed, but were outnumbered by counter-demonstrators Photo: Stringer/AFP/Getty Images

Anti-government protests continued in cities across Iran for a third day on Saturday, marking the most widespread unrest in the country since the pro-democracy Green Movement in 2009 — though nowhere near the same scale thus far. Thousands of pro-government protesters took to the streets in Tehran on Saturday as well. It was, ironically, a pre-planned celebration of the anniversary of the crackdown on the Green Movement, though it nonetheless provided the government and its supporters with an opportunity to push back.

The unrest began with a protest in Iran’s second largest city, Mashhad, on Thursday, apparently led by hardliners who wanted to voice their opposition to the reformist policies of Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. Protests don’t always go as planned in Iran, however, since people sometimes take advantage of the rare opportunities to publicly express dissent regardless of the original organizers’ intentions. That seems to be what happened in Mashhad, since what was an anti-Rouhani protest morphed into an anti-regime one, decrying rising prices, corruption, and Iran’s foreign policy expenditures in places like Syria and Lebanon:

The protests, publicized on the popular social media network Telegram and subsequently reported on by foreign-based satellite news networks, then quickly spread to other major cities on Friday, including Tehran and surprising places like the holy city of Qom.

The seemingly spontaneous, mostly provincial protests varied in size, and some, like in the mostly-Kurdish city of Kermanshah, resulted in violent clashes with police where arrests were made, while others appear to have been peaceful. The protests continued on Saturday, despite the government’s warning against participating in “illegal gatherings.”

As the Guardian and New York Times point out, small protests focused on economic issues are normal in Iran, but politically-charged protests across the country where people feel safe chanting “death to the dictator” — a knock on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — are not. The protests will undoubtedly be an important test for the relatively moderate Rouhani administration, and even some reformers in the country are suspicious about what forces may be at play behind the unrest. Some experts aren’t surprised at the sudden wave of protests, however, noting the economic discontent created by the ongoing rise of the cost of living as well as the unemployment rate in the country.

On Friday, the Trump administration, which has sought to undo President Obama’s diplomatic progress with Iran and has even flirted with fantasies of promoting regime change, criticized Iran’s government and urged it to allow the protests to continue. Calling for restraint against peaceful protests is the standard response to unrest in Iran from any administration, though this White House added some Trumpian flare:

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Statement by Donald J. Trump
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@realDonaldTrump
Many reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with regime’s corruption & its squandering of the nation’s wealth to fund terrorism abroad. Iranian govt should respect their people’s rights, including right to express themselves. The world is watching! #IranProtests

9:42 PM - Dec 29, 2017

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Now, even Iran experts aren’t sure what will happen next. As always, regime-change cheerleaders in the West should probably temper their expectations, but if the protests continue, spread, and increase in size — with or without prompting a violent crackdown by regime security forces — it could lead to a new political crisis in the country at a time when it already faces a resurgent rival in Saudi Arabia and a U.S. administration that seems reflexively anti-Iran.

There are also a lot more ways for reports and videos about the protests, as well as any attempted crackdown, to quickly spread than there were during the last unrest in 2009, though the Green Movement was triggered by major national news event, the likely fraudulent outcome of a presidential election, rather than a range of issues.

Then again, as analyst Ali Reza Eshraghi pointed out in a Twitter thread on Saturday, the Iranian regime has been afraid of public protests over economic malaise for decades, and while this new unrest comes nowhere near the magnitude of the 2009 protests, it also marks the first time that protests of this nature have occurred simultaneously throughout both provincial capitals and small towns. There has also been support from hardliners, who want the protests to tarnish Rouhani.

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Per Arash Karami
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@thekarami
The dilemma for Iranian conservatives is that they would normally blame these protests on stooges of the US and Israel but can't this time because they want to legitimize the protestors' economic grievances to tarnish Rouhani.

11:00 AM - Dec 30, 2017

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Stepping back, NIAC research director Reza Marashi, who worked on Iran for the State Department under the Obama administration, notes that the current political climate in Iran does not appear conducive to massive change, but that the gap between state and society will remain — making protest waves like the present one possible — so long as the political, economic, and social aspirations of the Iranian people remain unmet.