Amid deep economic and political crisis, Iran is presently seeing its largest public uprising since the 2009 “Green Movement”. Click here to know more.
The current wave seems demographically unique, politically neutral, and has ushered in a new era of uncertainty to the Islamic Republic.
What is unique with the recent uprising?
While all previous Iranian uprisings were urban middle class phenomenon, the current one is driven by lower working classes in small towns.
It started out with strong economic grievances of the downtrodden who’ve suffered due to economic mismanagement and political alienation.
Significantly, their economic frustrations have got channelized against Iran’s aggressive foreign interventions in Syria and Yemen.
Initially, hard-liners within the Iranian power elites hoped that protests would derail the reformist government of President Rouhani.
But the protests have spiralled out of control and seem to be challenging the very basis of the state and not just the government.
Hence, alongside issues of rampant inflation, corruption, and joblessness, the very legitimacy of the Islamic revolution of 1979 has come under scrutiny.
This signifies the emergence of a new young generation that doesn’t connect to the euphoria of the 1979 and the generational gap seems to be widening.
Events across cities reveal that despite iron fisted oppressive actions, the tension between discontented youth and the regime isn’t diffusing.
What are the demographic factors?
In the last 30 years, Iran underwent a major socio-political evolution, which has thrown up new challenges with no immediate solution.
Significantly, its increasingly young population has become more educated, secular and rebellious due to the rapid expansion of university education.
The demographic “youth bulge” combined with urbanisation, and increasing unemployment rates (40%) provided ripe sociological conditions for unrest.
Hence, alienation was building up in the essentially young and educated citizenry (including women) with no political, economic or social future.
Hence, Iran became a society divided between rich supporters of the regime and poor rebels with no ideology and no political leaders.
While the theocratic setup has been seeking to strike the appropriate balance in governance for long, it has never before been so categorically challenged.
What are the political implications?
The recurrent street protests in Iran are indicative of the meltdown of the theocratic ideology on which the republic was founded in 1979.
This is significant, as the present phase is led by the Iranian poor, who were thought to be the bedrock of the regime.
Notably, the Green Movement of 2009, which had a strong elite feed, also challenged the theocracy form a cultural perspective.
But strangely, the usual reformist voices stayed low in the current happenings and were totally absent in leading or participating in them.
Also, barring an erratic statement by Mr. Trump, international reactions have largely been muted and non-partisan.
This was probably due to the fear of internal tensions building up into a full blown civil war in Iran, like in Syria.
Notably, an unstable Iran won’t be liked even by Iran’s arch-rivals (Saudi Arabia, Israel) due to its potential catastrophic fallouts beyond Iran.
