By Gitika Sharma
Body:
It began in January in Iran as a public outcry over the country’s financial collapse and quickly ballooned into one of the biggest anti-government rallies the country has seen in decades.
Tens of thousands of Iranians have moved out to the streets, chanting antigovernment slogans and defying security forces, as blackouts to internet and phone services nationwide have made obtaining independent verification increasingly difficult. This instability is heading down another road with the exiled son of Iran’s last monarch, Reza Pahlavi. To do so, he has repeatedly begged Washington, calling for workers to cease going to work in vital industries such as transport, oil, gas and energy, for instance, in order to reduce the state’s cash flow and to “bring the Islamic Republic and its brittle repression machinery to its knees.”
Pahlavi has urged the protesters to take back the city centres and bring down the clerical order, describing his appeals, not in terms of romantic monarchism, but on the ground of more extensive civil war. His own statement resonated among the different currents of the movement, chanting slogans, some of them, in the style of Pahlavi and of the pre-1979 era, while others were of secularism and democracy at odds with the return to monarchy.
The protests, which have been held since dawn last week, are in all 31 provinces and highlight widespread anger over escalating prices, declining currencies and political repression. Iran’s government has responded directly with force.
The Security Forces, supported by the Revolutionary Guard Corps, have also prevented demonstrations, killing dozens (maybe hundreds, we have reports citing) and thousands. · Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, blamed foreign forces, notably the United States and Israel, during the protests and has mocked critics at home and abroad. Geopolitical stakes are apparent in overseas reactions. President Donald Trump warned Tehran of more violence but declined a callout to Pahlavi, signalling early on that he was not going to provide any advice on one man by other countries regarding Iranian politics going forward.
Pahlavi has also held meetings with U.S. and European leaders, addressing the direct support for the protests in Iran and to re-establish contact with the movement after their blackout. These demonstrations not only highlight how messy Iran is in political, social and international terms but also the challenge one faces in imagining alternatives, considering both the widespread and complex political, social, and international context around the protests.
Pahlavi’s symbolic role as both the galvaniser or voice in transition at the centre and as a vanishing symbol of his opposition reinforces that rather than a story of revival or degeneration in the past, the current crisis is a brutal expression of deep-seated friction about statehood that shapes who Iran is and how things may turn out.