{"id":238430,"date":"2021-04-22T11:54:03","date_gmt":"2021-04-22T16:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=238430"},"modified":"2023-02-01T04:58:09","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T03:58:09","slug":"economic-discontent-drives-growing-movement-for-regime-change-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/iran-protests\/economic-discontent-drives-growing-movement-for-regime-change-in-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Economic Discontent Drives Growing Movement for Regime Change in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"iranians-protesting-during-nationwide-uprising\"<\/p>\n

The Iranian regime\u2019s officials have been warning the establishment about the prospect of sustained, organized revolt for at least three years \u2013 ever since Iran was rocked by the first in a series of nationwide uprisings that brought calls for regime change into the mainstream. Those protests took place across more than 100 cities and towns at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018. But they were the culmination of a pattern of escalating unrest that had begun several years earlier.<\/p>\n

While the uprising was still ongoing, a spokesperson for the regime\u2019s Interior Ministry reported that there had been approximately 43,000 large public gatherings over a preceding four-year period, amounting to about 30 protests each day on average. To a large extent, these demonstrations were initially motivated by worsening outrage over the country\u2019s economic situation.<\/p>\n

Even the January 2018 uprising<\/a> began with a protest in the city of Mashhad which was focused on the regime\u2019s mismanagement of crises involving inflation and unemployment. But as the movement spread to surrounding areas, the participants began to emphasize a shared understanding that such mismanagement was an essential feature of the theocratic dictatorship and that all of Iran\u2019s sustained problems originated with the structure of the government.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, protesters began repeating unusually anti-regime slogans like \u201cdeath to the dictator\u201d while also explicitly rejecting both factions of the regime \u2013 the \u201cprinciplists\u201d associated with the dictator himself, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as the \u201creformists\u201d whose most prominent representative is currently the outgoing president, Hassan Rouhani.<\/p>\n

That anger stems from Rouhani and his faction being implicated in financial corruption and oppression right alongside the principlists, or hardliners. Rouhani\u2019s own younger brother and close advisor, Hossein Fereydoun, was famously sentenced to five years in prison in 2019, for charges that included receiving bribes.<\/p>\n

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Uprising in Southeast Iran and Retirees\u2019 Protests Suggest Society\u2019s Restiveness<\/div><\/div>
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