A sign at a currency exchange bureau as the value of the Iranian rial drops, in Tehran, Iran, December 20, 2025.(Majid Asgaripour/WANA via Reuters)
The Iranian people are at the end of their rope, and they’re letting their dissatisfaction be known.
There have been convulsive displays of mass public unrest inside Iran before. Each of them held out the promise of dealing a fatal blow to the theocratic regime in Tehran, and each of them failed to deliver on that potential.
There was the 2009 “Green Movement” that erupted in response to the disputed reelection of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- an outpouring of anti-regime sentiment Barack Obama could not bring himself to endorse (a hesitancy he later regretted). There were the “Day of Rage” protests, which lasted for a year and coincided with the 2011 Arab Spring. There was unrest ...
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