Picture by Tasnim News Agency. Some rights reserved. CC BY 4.0When US president Jimmy Carter described Iran as an ‘island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world’ on new year’s eve, 1977, not even the most ardent spokespeople for the unfolding revolution had the slightest idea Shah Mohammadreza Pahlavi’s regime was to last less than fourteen months. Similarly, and quite ironically, when the Iranian vice president Eshaq Jahangiri, deliberately echoing Carter, went on record as stating that ‘Iran is an island of stability in the insecure Middle East’ in an address in March 2017, nobody was expecting nationwide unrest to rock the country only ten months later. But the unexpected has now happened, leaving media commentators and Middle East experts struggling to come up with explanations.
One of the most recurring explanations given for this fleeting bout of anti-government demonstrations is economic grievances, especially among the unemployed, suburban youth. But while many analysts, both within Iran and without, have pointed to economic disaffection as the major stimulus for the current upheavals, others have expressed doubts, going so far as to identify ‘rising expectations’ as the underlying cause of unrest rather than declining economic prosperity. During a televised cabinet meeting, President Rouhani himself scapegoated the state-run TV by accusing it of downplaying the government’s economic achievements and, consequently, helping to foment socio-economic discontent. His reformist supporters, who took to the streets themselves in 2009 to contest election results, have reiterated the people’s right to peacefully protest and called on all sides to eschew violence.
Some of the high-profile public figures associated with the reformist camp have branded the protesters ‘uneducated riffraff’ and ‘radicals’ whose actions endanger the democratic process and jeopardise the future of the country. Their conservative opponents, on the other hand, have acknowledged the economic hardships faced by the nation, with some calling on the president to resign. Monarchist émigrés, led by Reza Pahlavi, the current head of the deposed ruling house of Iran, and droves of self-proclaimed ‘Iran experts’ affiliated with various Washington-based think-tanks, per usual, consider the events of the recent weeks to mark the beginning of the end for the Islamic republic.
