Since March 2016, Iran has seen 1,700 social protests, according to the Islamic Revolution Devotees Society (Jamiyat-e Isargara-e Enqelab-e Eslami), a conservative party of which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a founding member. Over the course of 2017, hundreds of protests took place by workers, pensioners, teachers, and students. Labour protests continued due to unpaid salaries, neoliberal economic policies and resistance towards labour organising, which were confronted with harsh repression by security forces and sanctioned by arbitrary layoffs. [...]
A number of key events over 2017 led popular disillusion with the regime as a whole to reach a new level. In May, after a deadly mine explosion in northern Iran, the miners' rage descended upon President Rouhani, when angry workers attacked his armoured vehicle when he wanted to visit the site. In mid-November the heavy earthquakes shaking the country had demonstrated to all Iranians the regime's utter neglect for their most vital needs - from the social housing, built under corrupt circumstances during the Ahmadinejad years, which had abruptly collapsed burying innumerous people under their rubble until the Rouhani administration's hesitant reaction to provide aid to the victims that left many literally in the cold. [...]
Over the last summer, Iranians became enraged about the elite's nepotism, mainly in the reformist camp. The outcry was provoked by a 20 July interview in which the son of the leading reformist politician Mohammad-Reza Aref credited his "good genes" for his professional success. On social media, Iranians identified more cases of such "Aqazadeh" whose lucrative jobs were due to their father's position in the system. On the one hand, this further undermined the tarnished reputation of the reformists, making clear that they were clearly part of the ruling elite and not on the side of the people they pretended to represent. On the other, the structuring wall erected after the revolution between regime insiders (khodi), who enjoyed access to state resources and privileges, and outsiders (qeyr-e khodi), seemed to be insurmountable for most Iranians. [...]
Structurally, the ongoing social misery, as well as the political system's autocratic and repressive nature, have long formed the dual and intertwined core of a regime who had monopolised economic and political power in its own hands. Today, almost half of the Iranian population persevere around the poverty line - which tellingly stands above the official minimum wage. Officially, every eighth is unemployed; among the youth one in four also is - in reality, the real figures should be much higher. It was precisely this impoverished youth in their 20s who were the drivers of the uprising. According to estimates, 40 percent of the youth are unemployed.
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