For almost five years now, the theocratic dictatorship ruling Iran has been experiencing arguably the most acute and multidimensional crisis in its forty-year-plus reign – and a crisis that shows no sign of abating anytime soon.

The Islamic Republic is more or less completely isolated internationally, after years of pursuing a malign and reckless foreign policy and the more recent abrogation by the US of the 2015 JCPoA – leading to the re-imposition of crippling sanctions on Iran. On top of this, the regime faces a serious and growing crisis at home with a support base which is estimated to have shrunk to 20%, at the very most, out of an 85-million-strong population. Years of gross mismanagement, endemic corruption, and sanctions have combined to create the proverbial ‘perfect storm’ in Iran.

It is estimated that around 45% of Iran’s population are under 35-years-old. This is a legacy of the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s call for the creation of a new generation of ‘Islamic Revolutionaries’.  His dream was that these young converts would then join the ranks of a 20 million strong Islamic army to spread Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. Ironically, it is this very generation that have turned their backs on anything remotely resembling the vision of the Islamic Republic’s founders and who comprise the system’s most ardent opponents. For it is this demographic group, having never known anything other than the Islamic Republic, that most demand the trappings of a functioning and viable economy – real jobs, decent wages and prospects – let alone human and democratic rights and political freedoms, and that have been so abjectly failed and let down. Youth unemployment is currently estimated to be running at 30% to 60% in Iran depending on the particular age group and locale concerned.

From the turn of 2017-2018, Iran has been the scene of a growing popular protest movement owing to the serious disgruntlement of mainly young adults from the lower social classes at the regime’s blatant disregard for their livelihoods, prospects, and means of survival, amidst an increasingly tough environment inside the country.

The sudden announcement of a triple-fold hike in the cost of petrol in November 2019 effectively lit the touchpaper for huge protests in cities and towns across Iran which the dictatorship’s security forces ruthlessly put down with lethal force and an internet blackout that lasted for several days. At least 650 mainly young protesters were killed and disappeared by the regime.

The simmering widespread discontent has continuously manifested itself from summer 2020, with the country reeling from a collapsing economy and the disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, in an ever-widening protest movement encompassing most sectors of Iranian society. The hugely popular and effective teachers’ protests are the latest example of this, and are regarded as particularly significant in that they pertain to a youth-facing sector… Essentially, the teacher’s demands and objectives are as much for the good of Iran’s students, future generations, and tomorrow, as they are for the teaching and educating sector itself.

And, despite the dictatorship’s default recourse to intimidation; arbitrary arrests and detention; and brutal, even deadly, violence, most Iran observers and analysts are coming to the conclusion that the regime is losing its grip on the situation. Some are even going as far as to draw parallels between this situation and that immediately before the uprising that culminated in the 1979 Iranian Revolution.