Iran Protests Explained

0:00This message comes from 48 Hours with the 48 Hours Post Mortem podcast. Host Anne-Marie Green joins producers and correspondents to discuss key evidence, dead ends, and stranger-than-fiction twists they faced in the field. Listen on your favorite podcast app. They're almost nothing like it was three years ago, you know. The people's attitude, the people's words, I could clearly sense that no one is truly satisfied anymore. The city felt like fire under ashes. Fire under ashes. This is the voice of an Iranian graduate student currently living and studying in the U.S. She asked that we refer to her as Kay.

0:43Back in early December, during her university's holiday break, she and her husband went back to Iran to visit family. They planned to stay a month. This was her first time back in three years. She says Iran kind of felt like a tinderbox when she got there. Not only because of economic problem or economic crisis, but also because of the suffocating atmosphere and the lack of civil freedoms. We will not be sharing her name because she asked to remain anonymous in order to protect her family in Iran. When I went to supermarket or hospital, bank, I've seen a conversation, I've heard conversation that people talk about Iranian currency and why it's really low and it's getting worse and what's going to happen.

1:34They didn't see any future upon them. Over the last several years, Iran's economy has been struggling. Sanctions from the U.S. and its allies, mismanagement from the government, they both played a major role in the downturn. But things got way worse in late December of 2025, when the riyal, Iran's currency, basically collapsed. One U.S. dollar became worth over one million riyals. This meant the buying power of Iranians was down by nearly half since 2022. My friend is like nurse. And even though she has to work hard, like long shifts with her husband, and they had to sell their golds to be able to live in even a smaller apartment in downtown.

2:25But they had to because they had no choice. Gold is something married couples usually receive as a gift at their weddings in Iran. It's like something you use one day to help your children or for your own retirement or to buy a house. This kind of story is very common. Many Iranians have had to resort to selling family heirlooms, working multiple jobs, and even selling their own organs just to pay for rent or food. They told me we can't see any future upon us with this economic situation. The economic pain triggered anger towards the government. And on December 28, 2025, within days of the currency collapse, protests began in Tehran, Iran's capital.

3:21In the downtown of the Tehran, there is a big bazaar that we call the Tehran Bazaar. The Tehran Bazaar is Iran's biggest market. It's an important central hub for all kinds of commerce. And the merchants who have shops there were very angry about the collapse of Iran's currency. They took to the streets and began protesting. Protests started from there. And then following that, other part of the city started to protest. It was like, I don't know, dominoes spreading to all over the country. Protests started in cities and spread to small towns. They even reached the quiet suburbs where Kay was staying.

4:06It started at night, like about 8 p.m. People from every background, like old, young, kids, our neighbors, all of them, even with their kids, were outside. What were they saying? The message was really clear. Down to the government. We don't want this government. They were calling death to Khamenei. Death to Khamenei. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been in power for 37 years. Calling for his death publicly is a very dangerous thing to do in Iran. This type of things to say, narrative to say in Iran, it was really like you have to pay a high price to it. Can I clarify? You're saying that saying death to Khamenei for you growing up was seen as something you couldn't do because you could be killed for it.

5:11Yeah, exactly. This government, actually they say, we are from God. And if you say we are against you We don't want to think like you. You're labeled as someone who is at war with God. And they accuse you of acting against national security and then execute you. I couldn't even myself believe that people shouting and calling this, even myself, even me and my family, We were shouting this in our house roof and even our neighbors. We weren't, like, afraid.

5:59But it would be a mistake to see this level of anger and fearlessness from protesters as only a response to economic issues. Iran is a theocracy. There is no separation of mosque and state. Every detail of one's life is subject to religious law and decree. This caused the massive protests in 2022 when Mahsa Gina Amini, a young woman, died in police custody after being arrested for allegedly not following Islamic laws around modest clothing or hijab. There was like really a police dedicated to hijab. that if you don't wear good clothes or you don't wear a hijab they they will follow you in the street it happens to me i was but i was with my father and one of the police uh came to me and like they warned me cover your hair and this is not appropriate clothes that you were here and my father he said i'm with her i'm i'm her father you you're not allowed to tell her anything and what are you doing and it was like like the argue between my father and the police and they they they were like it's none of your business your daughter has to wear hijab and if you like argue more than this, we will arrest most of you.

7:29Can you imagine? I was terrified. So this fear is everywhere. It's chasing you. The latest round of protests went on for days. And by early January, the security forces of the government began cracking down hard. They start to suppress and kill people. I've seen them with my own eyes, riot police and special forces. They were armed to the peace, all of the body covered. And they were carrying a kind of military grade weapons. And they were stopping cars on the roads and setting up checkpoints. And yeah, they were scary. So did you at any point start hearing, did you all hear gunfire? Yeah, yeah, I've heard that.

8:25I've heard that. I've heard like some gunshotting and it was really scary. Kay and her husband were set to come back to the U.S. on January 10th, but her flight was canceled. In response to the protests, the Iranian government cut off the internet and blocked outgoing calls for the entire country. Planes were grounded too. We were, both of us, we were like confused. What's going to happen if we can't find a flight? What's going to happen to our life? Both of us. After two days of going back and forth to the airport, they were finally able to secure a ticket. They made it out of Iran. They are back in the U.S.

9:07now, carrying on with their lives, but always with an eye towards what's happening in their homeland. We are 90 million people that we are fighting for our life. on the streets. And I, myself as Iranian, it is my responsibility to be their voice just because of my sisters and all my sisters around the country.

9:34Since the protests started in the last days of 2025, the Iranian government has used its security forces to stop the unrest. The violence has worked. The streets of Iran are mostly quiet, But the cost paid by demonstrators lingers. The Iranian government says at least 5 ,000 people have been killed since the protests started. U.S.-based human rights activist news agency reports more than 25 ,000 people have been arrested. NPR has not been able to independently confirm these numbers. How did this happen? On January 14th, I called up two experts on modern Iran, Ali Al-Funay and Holly Dagres, to ask them three central questions.

10:18What were the conditions that brought about the current uprising in Iran? How are these protests different from past ones? And how should the United States and its allies respond? We try to answer those questions on this episode of ThruLine from NPR.

10:46This is Joe from Portland, Oregon, and you're listening to ThruLine on NPR.

11:16Part 1. Origins.

11:45Mohammad Musateh. He stayed in power until 1979, when he was overthrown after a massive protest movement erupted against his autocratic rule. Iran's Muslim clerics emerged as the ruling force in the country, and Iran became a theocratic republic. In other words, it is ruled by Islamic law or Sharia, but it also has a president, legislature, and supreme court. On paper, it doesn't look much different from many other countries. But there is also a parallel government in Iran, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. He is unelected and has the final word on everything in domestic and foreign policy.

12:28There's also a parallel security force called the Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. This began as a small paramilitary force, but has ballooned into a massive military with its own army, navy, and air forces, which answer to the supreme leader. The Revolutionary Guards are the sword that enforces the regime's rule. But they've also expanded to become one of the largest players in Iran's economy, controlling significant parts of the construction, telecommunications, banking, mining, and import-export industries. Since 1999, the Islamic Republic has seen unrest from its population regularly, a repeating cycle of protest and repression.

13:13But each of these cycles has been unique. In 1999, it was a student-led protest movement focused on freedom of expression. In 2009's Green Revolution, the protest happened in response to what was perceived to be a stolen election. There were smaller-scale protests in the years after, until the next major one in 2022. The Women Life Freedom Movement started after Masa Jina Amini died in the hands of authorities after she was arrested for allegedly not observing Islamic dress codes. Fast forward to today's protests, sparked by economic crisis. For years, Iran has been under sanctions by the U.S.

13:54and its allies on its two biggest exports, oil and gas. It has some of the largest reserves of each in the world. Iran also has a solid manufacturing base. It's one of the biggest exporters of agricultural products in Asia. On paper, it should be a wealthy country. Yet, according to a report from the Iranian government, 30 % of Iranians live in extreme poverty. Purchasing power of the average Iranian has been hollowed out. The value of the Iranian currency is gone. This is Ali Alphone. He's a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, D.C. This in turn means that a regular school teacher is no longer even capable of purchasing a new pair of shoes once a year.

14:43For a relatively long time now, it's been very difficult to purchase meat for the kids. People who can't afford to purchase meat, they are too ashamed of, for example, having a barbecue in their backyard because they do not know how well or poorly the neighbor is doing. And the smell of food would be a problem for the kids of the neighbor. So this is the kind of disaster that Iran middle class, the average school teacher, the fireman, the nurse, even doctors, the professional middle class has been experiencing for the past year. Now, it is almost difficult. It really truly is hard to distinguish between the middle class and the poor.

15:29There is no longer any difference. You might remember Ali Alfone from our episode called Soleimani's Iran. He is an Iranian-born political scientist and an expert on the country's leadership. Ali says that these economic problems have been exacerbated by the fact that the pain is not being felt by everyone. Iran's middle class and also the poor who can afford to have a mobile phone and have access to the internet, they can watch YouTube channels. They see on TikTok the rich kids of Tehran who can afford$10 cup of coffee at the luxury shopping malls in northern Tehran. And even worse, on TikTok, they can see son of a former ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Venezuela, light up a Cuban cigar with a$100 bill.

16:21Now, this creates resentment. This creates anger and frustration. And this makes people just go to the street and demand ousting of a regime which clearly is caring for its own, but is not caring for the large middle class and the poor. So would you say that the response from the regime to this economic crisis has been insufficient? The Islamic Republic is incapable of attending to the economic problems of the Iranian state unless Iran manages to do something about the corruption, the rampant corruption, which is making the country as such poorer and poorer, but a very small part of Iranians who are engaged in sanction busting and engaged in smuggling Iran's oil and selling it in the black market internationally, but nevertheless, manage to fill their pockets.

17:26Unless Iran attends the issue of corruption at home and also reaches an agreement with the U.S., the Islamic Republic is not capable of solving Iran's economic problems. One question that the American audience might ask is what impact the tightening sanctions have had on this economic crisis for Iran. These are American sanctions on Iranian oil and other products I'm referring to. The Islamic Republic's main export has been oil and to some extent, smaller than gas. And this money is not reaching the Iranian state as much as before due to several reasons. One of them is the U.S. sanctions, which has made it very difficult for foreign buyers of Iran's oil to purchase the oil, simply because there are no banking links between Iranian banks and the international banking system.

18:20So even if there is a buyer, an international buyer, they cannot transfer the money through international banking system. The transfer either needs to take place through Chinese or Russian banks and then connected to Iran. This has left only one serious buyer in the international market for Iran's oil, and that's China. They can negotiate the price of Iranian oil even lower than it is in the global oil markets. What makes things even worse, you have the smugglers. A new class of Iranian merchants, usually connected with the Revolutionary Guard, who have their own shipping companies, and they are transferring and selling Iran's oil to the market, to the Chinese buyers.

19:09And they pocket huge sums of money in commission for their services. Corruption, mismanagement, sanctions. They've made Iran virtually unlivable for most of its population. But there is another major element in these protests we wanted to understand. Social issues. After the woman-life freedom protests in 2022, the Islamic Republic seemed to loosen restrictions on women's clothing. Yet that did very little to quell the resentment and anger on the streets. No longer having hijab patrols, patrolling the streets of the big cities, arresting women just because they are not sufficiently covered or not covered enough as according to the prescriptions of the government.

19:59That actually managed to calm the country for a while. But at the same time, no longer enforcing the hijab legislation also taught the Iranians a lesson. And it is that if you fight for a specific cause, the regime will make a retreat from its previous positions. They say that the government is not listening to our voice when we talk with them normally. So we have to take our protest to the streets. This is because of the Women's Life Freedom Movement that Iranians have recognized that they need to take matters into their own hands. And this is just a continuation of that pushing back against authority.

20:39This is Holly Dagras. I'm a senior fellow at the Washington Institute. I am also the curator of the popular newsletter on all things Iran, the Iranists on Substack. I'm Iranian-American and I spent my formative years in Iran. Hali went to high school in Tehran, Iran's capital, and witnessed firsthand how much the desire of young people for more social freedom has fueled uprisings in the country. I would say arguably that it was Iranian Gen Z that started this trend with the 2022 woman life freedom uprising. Everybody talks about this being a girl and women-led movement, but I would say it's a Gen Z one.

21:18And what you're seeing play out in Iran since December 28th I would argue it was youth-led. And a lot of the videos coming out of the country seem to suggest that these are young people, and we've had at least over a dozen under the age of 18 that have been killed by security forces.

21:47It's been extraordinary watching over and over again And Iranians risking their lives knowing full well they'll be met with bullets and batons. And that's what we're seeing play out in the past few weeks.

22:12Coming up, how the current protests in Iran are different from ones in the past. You're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

22:30Hi, my name is Deveria Sohail and I'm calling from London, United Kingdom. You're listening to ThruLine from NPR. Thank you so much for such a brilliant show and for helping me to understand the world that we're currently inhabiting. Thank you so much. Keep up the good work. Bye. Part 2. New Resistance For a very long time, the words Iran and protests have been paired regularly in the news. Iran has been here before. But there are some key differences this time around. Many of the past protests have focused on reforming the country, bringing about incremental changes on voting, freedom of expression, women's rights.

23:14But this time around, protesters appear to be demanding the end of the Islamic Republic entirely. The number of people going to the streets does not even amount to 5 % of Iran's total population. But the people who go to the streets, they truly mean what they are saying. And the 5 % opposing the regime, they do want to bring down the regime. But unfortunately for them, the regime is better armed and is better organized. The opposition, on the other hand, has no effective leadership, has no effective organization, has no real funding, and has no unifying vision for Iran after the collapse of the Islamic Republic.

24:01I think it's important to talk a little bit about the former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi's role in these protests. Reza Pahlavi is the son of Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, the Iranian Shah or king, who was deposed in the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic Republic into power. For most of the last 47 years, Reza Pahlavi has been living in exile in the U.S. I remember Iranians used to be like, Sam on a Shah at the time of the Shah, when they wanted to talk about when things were better. And I think that nostalgia has only grown because of the access to information. There's documentaries about pre-revolutionary Iran.

24:42There's also all these nice pictures and photos that go viral. And now with AI, there's also these like AI versions of what they're seeing.

24:57And that's why you've also been seeing these, I would say, pro-pah-la-vi chants. You've heard, this is the last battle Pahlavi will return. Referring to the crown prince and long live the Shah. Javid Shah. Javid Shah. And then Reza Shah Ruhet Shah. Reza Shah, may your soul be blessed. Referring to his grandfather, the founder of the dynasty.

25:25And there's a real sense, at least among some Iranians, that he should be a transitional leader. or that he is just a symbol, the antithesis of the Islamic Republic.

25:41This is one of the many messages Reza Pahlavi has directed towards the Iranian people in the last few weeks.

25:50Dear people of Iran, my brave compatriots, you have over the last two weeks shaken the Islamic Republic at its foundations. He made a call and said that Iranians, regardless of your political chance that you want to use, you should be out on the rooftops or in the streets making those chants. And I saw activists and celebrities in Iran endorse this call for change in Iran that he pushed for. Reza Pahlavi has said he wants to be a transitional leader if the Islamic Republic falls, helping the country towards a referendum on what the future government should look like. He's also cozied up to the Islamic Republic's biggest enemies like Israel and the United States.

26:37With all of that, Ali Alfonay is not convinced that Reza Pahlavi can actually deliver on his promises. I'm still not seeing Mr. Reza Pahlavi as an effective leader of the revolution. But I do see him as a symbolic figure. And I also do believe that many Iranians, when looking at him, they think of an almost mythical era when there was no air pollution in Tehran. The grocery was inexpensive. And taxi drivers were really polite. That nostalgia is something that endears Mr. Zappalavi to many, many Iranians. But is he an effective leader of the revolution? I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps he will emerge as a leader in the coming years.

27:38There's something that I've noticed about these protests that seem to be different from the ones in the past. And it's centered around sort of what we can tell, at least from symbolism. And one is the flag that many people are flying. Can you talk about what the lion and sun flag is, basically, and how it differs from Iran's official flag and what that means? I know that some associate the lion and sun flag with the monarchy, but it's actually a flag that's been around for a very long time. There's been various, there's been different variations of it throughout history. The sun and lion is a symbol that's been around since ancient Persia.