Four nationwide uprisings in seven years. Thousands of lives lost. And a ruling system that still insists its opposition “doesn’t exist.” Yet once again, Iran is proving that repression has not extinguished resistance — it has refined it.
This week, as Tehran’s Grand Bazaar closed its doors and protests rippled through dozens of cities, even state-aligned outlets quietly acknowledged a truth long denied: the unrest is not spontaneous, and it is not fading. It is organized, persistent, and expanding.
The immediate spark was economic collapse. Iran’s currency plunged to a historic low — roughly 1.42 million rials to the dollar — pushing merchants to shut their shops in open defiance. But as before, economics merely lit the fuse. What propels the uprising forward is political fury, rooted in decades of repression, corruption, and exclusion.
If momentum holds, this marks the fourth major uprising since 2017. That year, protests over deteriorating living conditions erupted nationwide. In November 2019, a sudden fuel price hike triggered a far broader revolt, crushed with extreme violence by security forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, leaving an estimated 1,500 dead.
Even mass killing failed to restore legitimacy. In the years that followed, Iranians responded with sweeping election boycotts, forcing officials to admit record-low turnout and deep public rejection of the entire ruling system — not just its personalities.
That crisis exploded again in September 2022 after the death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody. What began as mourning turned into the most serious challenge to the theocracy since 1979, spreading to hundreds of cities across all 31 provinces. Despite the deaths of at least 750 protesters, resistance continued well into 2023 and never fully ceased.
Taken together, these uprisings form a single chain — each passing the flame forward. Their continuity is evident in shared slogans like “Death to the oppressor — be it Shah or Leader,” reflecting a broader rejection of both past and present dictatorship.
This is not a reform movement. It is a society demanding fundamental change.
Reports increasingly link this continuity to organized Resistance Units operating nationwide. Even regime media have inadvertently confirmed it. Fars News recently admitted that opposition leadership called for a “chain of protests” and described coordinated cells guiding chants beyond economic grievances — a confession in all but name.
Attempts to redirect anger toward figures like Reza Pahlavi have failed on the streets, where chants answer clearly: “Neither crown nor turban.” Iranians are not seeking to exchange one form of authoritarianism for another.
What happens in Iran will not stay in Iran. For four decades, this regime has exported instability across the Middle East. A democratic Iran would reshape not only the lives of its 90 million citizens, but the region’s security as a whole.
The regime has survived through violence and the claim that no alternative exists. The violence remains. The myth does not.