Protests in Iran, which began on December 28, 2025 after a sharp collapse of the rial, have quickly moved beyond purely economic grievances. According to Iran expert Mikhail Borodkin, the first to rise were traders from Tehran’s bazaar, but within days they were joined by young people and residents of other cities, and the slogans shifted from social demands to political ones.
The economic backdrop, he says, is extremely severe: official inflation is about 40% a year, while prices for some goods have risen by 70-100%. Against that background, the authorities’ decision to grant an allowance of 10 million rials, which he describes as roughly seven dollars a month, only deepened public anger. Additional outrage followed figures published in Persian by Israel’s Foreign Ministry: Iranian citizens are said to receive seven dollars, while Hezbollah fighters get $1,800 each.
From the evening of January 8, 2026, internet access as well as mobile and landline communications were cut across the country. Even so, before the full blackout, videos reportedly appeared showing a Revolutionary Guards site burning in Tehran and a television center building on fire in Isfahan. Reports of deaths, injuries, and possible refusals by security forces to fire on demonstrators remain unconfirmed, Borodkin says, because of the information blockade.
“The only thing the protesters are saying now is: ‘Down with the regime!’”
In the expert’s view, this reflects the depth of public despair, but also the weakness of the protest movement: there is still no unified structure inside the country capable of presenting a political program or acting as an alternative authority. Reza Pahlavi, the heir to the overthrown shah, who urged people to protest on January 8 and 9 and said he was ready to return to Iran, is for now more a symbol of change than an organized political center.
Borodkin considers the current unrest more acute than the protests of 2022. Still, he assesses its immediate prospects cautiously: without organization among protesters and without a split within the ruling elite, the chances of success remain limited, although even a harsh crackdown, in his view, would not remove the causes of another explosion of discontent.