Protests driven by economic desperation are intensifying across Iran, exposing the widening gap between a population crushed by inflation and a ruling system that continues to answer hardship with arrests, threats, and recycled accusations of foreign plots.

For a fourth consecutive day, demonstrators poured into streets and campuses across the country on Tuesday as the Iranian rial plunged to historic lows, wiping out purchasing power and pushing daily survival out of reach for millions. In the southern city of Fasa, in Fars province, anger boiled over when protesters attempted to force their way into a local government building—an extraordinary escalation that underscored the depth of public rage.

State television moved quickly to frame the incident in familiar terms, describing the demonstrators as an “organized group of rioters” and insisting the situation was brought under control by security forces. Footage broadcast by state media showed crowds pressing against the gates of the governorate building before being driven back. Authorities said a 28-year-old woman alleged to be the “leader” of the group was arrested, a claim that immediately raised skepticism among Iranians accustomed to seeing women singled out as symbolic scapegoats.

The semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that three members of the security forces were wounded and that four protesters were detained.

Yet the protests did not begin in Fasa, nor were they confined to it. They erupted in Tehran on Sunday, when shopkeepers shut their doors and took to the streets as the rial collapsed. Since then, demonstrations have spread rapidly. Students marched through universities in Tehran, Isfahan, Yazd, and Zanjan, according to reports from the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency. The unrest has reached multiple social strata, from merchants to students, signaling a broad-based breakdown in public tolerance.

At the center of the crisis is a currency in free fall. When protests began, the rial was trading at roughly 1.42 million to the US dollar—nearly half its value from a year earlier, when it stood around 820,000. Inflation is hovering near 50 percent, while basic goods, particularly imported food and medicine, have surged beyond the reach of ordinary families. Salaries have not kept pace. Savings have evaporated.

The government’s response has been a mix of denial, deflection, and menace.

Speaking at a business forum in Tehran, President Masoud Pezeshkian avoided addressing the root causes of the economic collapse, instead hinting darkly at internal and external enemies. “We are in a situation where external pressures are being exerted by the country’s enemies and, unfortunately, within the country as well,” he said, warning that a lack of “synergy” was weakening the nation.

Iran’s prosecutor general, Mohammad Movahedi-Azad, promised a “decisive response” if protests crossed what the regime defines as acceptable boundaries. While acknowledging that “peaceful livelihood protests” are understandable, he warned that any action deemed to create “insecurity” or resemble “externally designed scenarios” would be met with force.

In the lexicon of the Islamic Republic, such language has a grim history.

Iranian officials have repeatedly used claims of foreign interference to justify crackdowns that leave hundreds dead and thousands imprisoned. The echoes of 2022 and 2023 are impossible to ignore. Those nationwide protests, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in morality police custody, were initially dismissed as unrest stirred by outsiders. They ended with mass arrests, executions, and bloodshed on city streets.

This time, the spark is economic, but the conditions are just as combustible.

Iran’s economy, already battered by decades of sanctions, has been under renewed strain since late September, when the United Nations reinstated international sanctions linked to Tehran’s nuclear program. At the same time, the country is grappling with cascading crises: an energy shortfall, near-empty dams around Tehran and other major cities, and worsening air pollution that has forced school closures.

State media coverage has been tightly controlled, emphasizing currency depreciation while studiously avoiding any discussion of deeper dissatisfaction with the theocratic establishment that has ruled since 1979. Officials insist the unrest is limited, manageable, and disconnected from politics. On the ground, however, the scale and persistence of demonstrations suggest otherwise.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)