Iran Today
Contemporary Iran — domestic protests, economic crisis, regional realignment, and the nuclear threshold.
Domestic Crisis
The 2022 'Woman, Life, Freedom' protests, triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody, represented the most serious challenge to the Islamic Republic since 1979. The protests cut across ethnic, class, and generational lines, with demonstrators explicitly calling for regime change — not reform.
The government responded with lethal force, killing over 500 protesters and detaining thousands. Yet the underlying drivers — economic stagnation, youth unemployment above 25%, restrictions on personal freedoms, and a legitimacy crisis as the population grows increasingly secular — remain unresolved. The regime faces a demographic challenge: over 60% of Iranians were born after the revolution and feel no loyalty to its founding ideals.
