In Iran, Another Day of Widespread Protests

By Hugh Fitzgerald | Dec 30, 2025

The people of Iran are protesting in the streets, demanding to end the Islamic regime.

They call for Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to lead a new free Iran.

I support their noble fight for freedom. Israel stands with them. pic.twitter.com/RD8qIPXIdE

— Hananya Naftali (@HananyaNaftali) December 29, 2025

In 1979, when the Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Iran and the Islamic Republic began, one American dollar was worth 70 Iranian riyals. Today one American dollar is worth 1,250,000 riyals. Such is the state of Iran’s collapsing economy. More than 40% of Iranians now live below the poverty line. 60% of Iranian university graduates cannot find jobs. There are electricity blackouts across the country, because the drought has caused many hydroelectric dams to be rendered inoperative, no longer producing electricity. There is now talk of moving all ten million residents of Tehran out of the city, to places where more water is available.

The country’s economic mainstay, its revenues from oil, keep decreasing. Today the market value of a barrel of oil has sunk to $62 a barrel, but American sanctions have forced Iran to sell its oil to China at a discount of $11 per barrel. And the riyal keeps decreasing in value.

The protests now in Iran are too widespread for the army to put down, and the regime fears what could happen if some in the military refuse to fire on, or may even join, the protesters. More on the situation on the streets, where economic despair is metamorphosing into political unrest, can be found here: “Protests erupt across Iran as collapsing rial sparks unrest, regime blames ‘enemy’ influence,” by Danielle Greyman-Kennard, Jerusalem Post, December 29, 2025:

A second day of protests in Iran raged on Monday [Dec. 29] as demonstrators voiced anger over the rapidly falling value of the rial. Regime officials blamed the unrest and broader economic decline on “enemy psychological warfare.”

There is no need for “enemy psychological warfare” — that is, either from the Little Satan, Israel, or the Great Satan, America. Iranians see for themselves — no outside guide is needed — in the unemployment rates, the stiff rise in food prices, the removal of subsidies that have led to an enormous rise in the price of fuel. This is what they experience in their lives and have no need of others — “the enemy” — bringing their desperate situation to their attention. They also are keenly aware of how their rulers live, and it maddens them. They have heard about the $95 billion in assets that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, is reported to control; how many of that tremendous sum has been squirreled away for himself and his extended family remains a matter of resentful speculation.

“Shopkeepers [the famed bazaaris who played such an important role in bringing down the shah] in Tehran closed their stores, and mass demonstrations broke out in response to the rial’s fall. Clashes reportedly occurred across multiple streets in Tehran, with authorities using tear gas to disperse the protesters, according to footage of the events.

“Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brig.-Gen. Ali Akbar Pourjamshidian, the security and law-enforcement deputy to the interior minister, blamed the fluctuations in foreign-exchange markets on “enemy inducements.”

General Pourjamshidian is an economic illiterate. What conceivable “enemy inducements” would cause the riyal to fall to such a catastrophic low? It is the Iranian government that chose to spend more than $100 billon on its nuclear program, only to see it all go up in smoke when Israel destroyed that program in the 12-day war it launched on Iran last June. It is the Iranian government that chose to transfer huge amounts of both expensive weaponry and money to its proxies — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Lebanon. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has estimated that Iran spends $16 billion a year on these three proxies. And here again, the IDF has destroyed weapons worth many billions of dollars. This, too, is known to the people of Iran..

“In my opinion, a large part of the currency problems and fluctuations is affected by the psychological atmosphere of the market,” he was quoted as saying. “The enemy is desperately seeking to take advantage of the created atmosphere. People should be aware of this issue and not be influenced by the enemy’s insinuations. The market should continue its work peacefully, and people should not worry.”

The IRGC attributed the dissent to “cognitive warfare, psychological operations, and narrative creation.”

“Despair, instilling fear, and encouraging surrender to the enemy in the current circumstances are clear examples of seditious behavior,” it said.

No “enemy” need be blamed for the despair Iranians feel as a result of the waste, mismanagement, and misallocation of resources by their despotic government. They don’t want to “surrender” to an enemy; they simply want to throw out the despotic theocrats who have made their lives hell for the past 45 years. Furthermore, the people of Iran, as opposed to the country’s rulers, don’t see Israel as an enemy.

The proximate cause of the latest protests was the government’s decision to cut the fuel subsidies that had been in place for years, and thus the price has suddenly been increased. Such a measure had been put off for years because of fears that it might cause protests; now the rise in the fuel price will be larger than if the subsidy had been steadily and slowly decreased, and the protests, consequently, are proving to be more difficult to suppress.

From his refuge in the United States, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi has for years been beaming messages of encouragement to the disaffected masses in Iran. Now one hears his name being shouted at these protests. The people in the streets don’t just want an improvement in the economy. They want political freedom as well. After 45 years, they want to topple the regime. And they are counting on some in the military — first a little, thence to more — refusing to suppress them, or better still, joining the protesters. The last major protest in Iran was in 2022 over the death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish girl whom the religious police had picked up for “wearing her hijab incorrectly.” She was then beaten in a police van so severely that she died. The protest now has been prompted not by a revolt against the religious police, but by the despair over minuscule salaries, massive unemployment, the spread of poverty to almost half the population, the waste, mismanagement, and misallocation of resources, which includes the hundred billion dollars spent on Iran’s nuclear program and the $16 billion spent annually on weapons for terrorist proxies, and much higher prices for both food and fuel.

The latest protests began in Tehran late in the afternoon on December 28, and within less than 24 hours, protests had spread to cities across Iran, to Mashhad, Kermanshah, Hamedan, Karaj, Malard, and Qeshm. Bazaaris in all those cities shut up their shops in protest, as they did in 1978 in protest against the shah. Crowds have been shouting “This is the year of blood. Seyyed Ali [Ayatollah Khamenei] will be overthrown.” The regime refuses to redirect its spending from its military to improving the living standards of its enraged and despairing people. How long will the Basiji be willing to oppress their own people, and how many of them, who are also victims of the regime’s economic failures, will now be prepared to join the protesters?