Iran Protests Explained: Why Are Thousands of Iranians Taking to the Streets

Haaretz ^ | Jan 1, 2018 | Allison Kaplan Sommer

[Eddie01]

It was one thing to see that the conservatives couldn’t change things, but Rohani was someone who had great potential, experts say

The angry wave of anti-government protests in Iran – more widespread than those in 2009 – has stunned even experts on the region.

The intensity of the unrest that began Thursday has shocked the world because, by all measures, things are better under Rohani than they were under his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose hard-line policies and financial mismanagement left Iran’s economy in ruins.

[snip]

He says the fact that Rohani’s reforms did not seem to be improving the desperate situation in many Iranian households was the prime factor in driving Iranians to believe that their country's problems were larger than one leader.

[snip] 

What exactly is infuriating the Iranians now taking to the streets?

The reason most often attributed to the initial wave of protests was the cost of living, particularly the cost of food, unemployment and inflation. Many Iranians – even families with members whose employment normally affords them middle-class status – have been forced to take multiple jobs.

“The promises that Rohani gave in terms of the revitalization of trade with the outside world trickling down to the average Iranian never materialized,” Ali Fathollah-Nejad, a fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, told Al Jazeera.

But Javedanfar notes factors angering Iranians beyond the economy. Anger has coalesced around the government’s incompetent handling of the earthquakes that have racked parts of the country and created anxiety about how Iran as a whole is being managed. Another factor that he believes has been underreported in the West is the pollution problem in parts of Iran, where children are ordered to stay home and miss school.

[snip]

[Eddie01]

Lengthy, but in my opinion unfiltered, in-depth and accurate.

[dhs12345]

Demand for petroleum is down?

[gaijin]

Freacking

[Kartographer]

Many Iranians are yearn for the word of Christ. Thousands of bibles are smuggled in each year but never enough.

[dhs12345]

Good. I bet it is tough for Iranian Christians.

[bert]

-—Those who damage public property, violate law and order, and create unrest are responsible for their actions and should pay the price.”——

Words never spoken by Barack Obama who condoned the violence, the looting and burning by his out of control black Lives Matter stooges

[donozark]

The Mullahs are refusing to divide the $$ the Clinton’s gave them?

[fhayek]

Pollution, that’s it. Couldn’t be that the price of petroleum is down, and Trump is in the White House. It might be their best chance at toppling the regime.

[gandalftb]

I think this is a better explanation:
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/iran/1.832218

Cost of Living in Iran is not the issue:
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Iran';

[MtnClimber]

It will take a civil war to oust the mullahs from their strangle hold on power. The protesters need to take the lesson of the Liberator Pistol and take arms from the military and police they kill in surprise attacks.

[Kozy]

Global warming is the cause! Reduce global warming and the rioting stops.

[LRoggy]

I can not imagine a bigger win FOR THE WORLD than an overthrow of the Mullahs in Iran.

And then imagine the Iranians who take over pulling a Qaddafi and giving up their nuke program?

How bad would Obama look then? And George Friedman of Stratfor, for that matter . . .

Of course Morning Joe would bemoan the unfair praise due Trump . . . and Krugman would call if a catastrophe for the Stock Market . . . well, you get the point . . .

[Billthedrill]

Mentioned in the article is that the 0bama administration's lifting of sanctions in the nuclear "deal" has released "tens of billions of dollars" in trade restricted by those sanctions. It's a financial windfall that has failed to reach the citizens, and the popular view is that it has all been, or is about to be, squandered on military activity. We are informed that the IRG has ambitions of establishing a port and shipping facilities in Syria (so did the Russians) to further fund and export Islamic revolution but that will constitute a drain on the economy for the foreseeable future. In short, the people in the street had hoped for change when Ahmadinejad left and have been presented with unceasing war.

One upshot of this investment in violence, however, is a ready supply of armed thugs which may be called upon to support the regime and put down the protesters, as they did in 2009. This isn't going to be any Velvet Revolution. The real damage the 0bama administration did in backing the regime in 2009 and presenting it with an enormous financial windfall (literally pallets of cash and that wasn't all by any means) as a consequence of the nuclear negotiations, is something that is going to cost the entire Middle East dearly in the coming years. I wish success to the demonstrators but I wouldn't place any large bets in that direction.

[Tallguy]

Revolutions happen when the peoples’ expectations exceed what the government is delivering. Therefore, revolutions often happen when things are actually improving.

[Kartographer]

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

[SVTCobra03]

Price of petroleum is down? Really?

Brent crude prices finished Friday at $66.87 a barrel, up 18% for the year and 49% above its 52-week low in June, following a series of supply disruptions. WTI prices, meanwhile, gained 12% to end at $60.42 in 2017.

[fhayek]

Everything is relative. During most of the Obama years, it hovered at above the $100 mark. Lately, of course, it has come off its recent lows.

[Drew68]

Brave Iranian woman protests pollution. Removes hajib in defiance of Islamic dress code, uses it to wave the smog away. So brave.

Drumpf's fault.

[Kartographer]

Bravery knows no nationality, no sex, no religion, no race, no age and should be recognized rather committed by friend or foe. Does not the Bible say:"Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour." Romans 13:7

Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: "Merciful Father, I have squandered my days with plans of many things. This was not among them. But at this moment, I beg only to live the next few minutes well. For all we ought to have thought, and have not thought; all we ought to have said, and have not said; all we ought to have done, and have not done; I pray thee, God, for forgiveness."
The 13th Warrior (1999)

[freedomlover]

That passage gets quoted a lot here. It’s good writing, and gives a dramatic impression that if they had just stuck their necks out and been willing to die earlier for the cause, al would have ended up well.

But IMHO the money quote is

– we had no awareness of the real situation....

Lack of information coupled with a failure to understand that your own government does not have your best interests in mind is all it really takes.