Here’s What’s Behind Iran’s Biggest Protests In Seven Years

Inflation and unemployment have hobbled prospects for Iran’s youth, as well as the lower-middle class. One trigger for the protests appears to have been a spike in the price of eggs.

Rouhani had vowed that the 2015 nuclear deal with the West would improve the country’s economy, but growth has fallen far short of expectations. Many of Iran’s economic problems are rooted in the control corrupt and incompetent hardliners have over levers of the economy, everything from the travel industry to imports and the gigantic energy sector. Rouhani has been unable to roll back corruption or tweak the economy without taking on the entrenched positions of the hardliners.

Friday’s protests were by far the worst political unrest Iran has experienced since the period after the 2009 vote, which triggered months of arrests and violence, extending far across Iran’s geography. Video showed protesters, sometimes with children in tow, scuffling with police in the northern port city of Rasht and calling for the end of the regime in Qom, the city that educated most of the country’s clerical leadership.

“Leave Syria alone,” went one slogan used throughout the day, in reference to Iran’s ambitious military intervention in the Syrian conflict, “give a thought to us.”

There were also small reports of protests in the capital, Tehran, the epicenter of the 2009 uprising.

Tehran’s deputy governor-general for security affairs told the Iranian Labour News Agency that “a number of protesters” have been arrested at a small protest in a square in the city.