Iran’s New Year demonstrations and the question of regime survival

The New Year demonstrations successful Iran came astatine the extremity of a twelvemonth marked by war, economical strain, and governmental uncertainty.

In 2025, Israel launched a 12-day onslaught connected Iran, assassinating elder subject leaders and targeting subject and economical infrastructure. The battle was followed by US strikes connected Iranian atomic facilities successful Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz.

As the twelvemonth closed, protests erupted successful the capital, Tehran, and successful cities crossed cardinal and southwestern Iran, opening successful the last week of 2025 and continuing into the archetypal days of 2026.

These protests were not unprecedented. Iranian nine has witnessed thousands of demonstrations since the mid-1990s, varying successful standard and levels of participation. Over the years, the drivers of these demonstrations person differed, ranging from restrictions connected societal and governmental freedoms to the deterioration of economical conditions.

In Iran, recurring protests are shaped by the enactment betwixt home politics, governance, overseas policy, and the interaction of sanctions, which unneurotic power some the emergence of dissent and the state’s effect to it, peculiarly amid sustained sanctions and ongoing tensions with Israel and the United States.

The protests that closed the twelvemonth followed a onslaught by merchants and bazaar owners implicit a crisp diminution successful purchasing power. This accelerated diminution was driven by rising inflation, reflected successful the falling worth of the Iranian rial, which mislaid the equivalent of astir 50 percent of its value, and by an summation successful unemployment to 7.5 percent.

This was not the archetypal clip economical grievances had sparked unrest. In 2008, pursuing an summation successful the complaint of value-added tax, the bazaar erupted successful protest, forcing the authorities of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to retreat from implementing the measure.

More constricted demonstrations followed successful 2010, aft the Ahmadinejad authorities attempted to enforce a instrumentality raising the income taxation complaint to 70 percent, earlier retreating again nether fashionable pressure.

Across Iran’s protestation movements implicit antithetic periods, economical concerns person consistently featured alongside demands for greater societal freedom, including absorption to compulsory hijab laws. These issues prompted wide demonstrations successful 2022, aft the sidesplitting of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini portion successful custody implicit the hijab law, and the authorities’ attempts to blasted her for what happened, which fuelled nationalist anger.

Nevertheless, nary cardinal reforms person been undertaken by successive governments. President Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005) projected an alternate economical strategy focused connected reducing reliance connected lipid revenues and processing non-oil sectors to mitigate the interaction of sanctions, which often people Iran’s lipid industry. These measures did not succeed, however, arsenic the atomic situation escalated aft the work of the archetypal images of the Natanz installation successful August 2002, expanding economical unit from abroad.

From 2005 to 2013, Ahmadinejad pursued a populist approach, centred connected redistributing lipid revenues done the alleged oil-to-cash programme. This strategy failed, encountering absorption from almighty home economical interests and the tightening sanctions authorities imposed by the United Nations Security Council, nether resolutions 1696, 1737, 1747, 1803, and 1929. These measures restricted trade, froze fiscal assets, and curtailed entree to planetary finance, gathering connected years of unilateral US sanctions dating backmost to 1980.

Bad governance, oregon sanctions?

As demonstrations person expanded successful scope implicit time, an enduring question has resurfaced: To what grade bash sanctions explicate Iran’s economical crisis, and wherever does governance carnivore responsibility?

Iran’s system has suffered from longstanding structural problems that person not been addressed since 1980, arsenic priorities linked to revolutionary ideology and its associated costs person taken precedence implicit gathering a resilient authorities economy. Economic and fiscal authorities failed to support gait with planetary developments. As a result, Iran became progressively isolated from planetary markets, compounding interior crises and amplifying the interaction of sanctions crossed astir each sectors.

This raises a persistent question for Iran’s governmental and economical elite: Why person successive governments failed to beforehand economical policies and programmes susceptible of countering the effects of sanctions?

In this context, Iran’s economical partnerships with China, astir notably the 25-year strategical practice statement – valued astatine $400bn and covering energy, telecommunications, transport, and infrastructure – person not delivered economical stability. Nor has the strategical concern with Russia, signed successful aboriginal 2025 and intended to fortify practice implicit 2 decades, improved Iran’s economical situation.

Together, these partnerships person failed to mitigate the harsh consequences of sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union.

Iranian nationalist opinion, arsenic reflected successful protestation slogans, has agelong linked overseas policy, peculiarly Iran’s engagement successful the Middle East to the depletion of nationalist income. Iran’s enactment for proxies and equipped groups — including successful Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, arsenic good arsenic Palestine — has agelong been portion of its determination strategy, drafting connected funding, training, and logistical assistance from Tehran. As surviving conditions deteriorated, the slogan “No Gaza oregon Lebanon, fto my beingness beryllium a scapegoat for Iran” was heard repeatedly, emerging arsenic a defining diagnostic of demonstrations astatine the extremity of 2024.

Since aboriginal 2025, however, this linkage has go little convincing arsenic an mentation for Iran’s economical crisis. Iranian power has declined importantly successful Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and Yemen, weakening the statement that determination engagements are the superior drain connected authorities resources. This displacement has gone truthful acold that immoderate Iranian subject officials person adjacent demanded that Syria repay astir $50bn successful indebtedness to Iran — a assertion rejected by members of Syria’s caller interim authorities arsenic they hole a compensation measure against Tehran for the costs of its enactment for the authorities during the civilian warfare alternatively than judge repayment.

For the archetypal time, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian person publically acknowledged that work for Iran’s economical concern cannot beryllium placed solely connected sanctions. This admittance underscored the continuing centrality of governance failures and clarified however the enactment interprets the protests that followed the Israeli and US attacks successful the summertime of 2025.

Diverging narratives and the risks ahead

Iran’s enactment present advances 2 competing narratives to explicate the demonstrations. The first, articulated by the ultimate person and the president, centres connected failures successful economical governance and recognises that sanctions unsocial cannot relationship for the extent of the crisis. The second, promoted by the information establishment, continues to emphasise the relation of outer actors successful inciting unrest and targeting the regime.

This divergence creates disorder wrong authorities institutions, arsenic the information communicative implicitly frames the demonstrations arsenic an existential threat. In doing so, it deepens societal tensions and widens the spread betwixt the authorities and society.

Historically, concerns implicit authorities endurance person strengthened the presumption of the information constitution successful responding to protests. Today, however, a changed interior and determination discourse places unit connected some governmental and information institutions to respond differently, if the endurance of the governmental strategy is to beryllium ensured.

At the aforesaid time, the assurance and subject capableness felt by Israel, combined with what Iranian leaders comprehend arsenic unlimited US support, has enabled Israeli decision-makers to earnestly contemplate a caller warfare connected Iran. Israel has efficaciously begun a 2nd subject cognition done a wide communicative that it volition not let Iran to enrich uranium astatine all, and that the Iranian atomic programme should beryllium dismantled conscionable arsenic the Libyan atomic programme was dismantled successful 2003. Such a struggle would purpose to render the authorities fragile, politically, economically, and successful information terms.

This imaginable has intensified Iran’s interior confrontation with its society, raising the anticipation that a prolonged authorities of struggle could yet pb to authorities change, adjacent if lone implicit time, with the declared purpose of neutralising what Israel regards arsenic the “Iranian threat” erstwhile and for all.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.