To understand roots of uprisings in Iran, one need to go back to 1979 revolution, expert says
The Iranian uprisings that shake the country every few years have gone through several transformative stages.
This was stated in an interview with Ukrinform by Belgium-based Iranian researcher Mohsen Behzad Karimi.
“To understand the roots of uprisings in Iran, we need to go back to 1979, the revolution itself. The fall of the Shah ended a state that had pursued rapid modernization, institutional development, secular governance, women’s rights, education, and international integration. What followed was not a democratic transition, but the establishment of a clerical system that dismantled the state institutions inherited from the previous era and replaced them with ideological rule,” the analyst said.
He explained that in the years immediately following the revolution, the public did not protest against the new regime; instead, there was a gradual and violent elimination of organized opposition.
“In the early 1980s, the Islamic Republic moved to crush groups such as the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK) and various Marxist-Islamist and leftist organizations, despite the fact that these same groups had been part of the broad revolutionary coalition that helped bring about the fall of the Shah. Once clerical power was consolidated, they were redefined as enemies of the revolution,” Karimi said.
In particular, the MEK quickly shifted from political opposition to armed confrontation and later openly cooperated with Saddam Hussein during the Iran–Iraq War. This cooperation provided the regime with both justification and an opportunity to eliminate organized opposition, the expert noted, adding that by around 1981 mass arrests, executions, and repression had begun.
“However, this period still did not constitute a genuine mass popular rebellion by society at large; it was primarily an internal power struggle between the regime and former revolutionary factions,” Karimi said.
In his view, the Iran–Iraq War of 1980–1988 became society’s main priority, militarized everyday life, and allowed the regime to rule through a permanent state of emergency, while actively preventing the emergence of any independent opposition. “Political organization outside state control was made impossible, while society was fully mobilized around survival, defense, and national security,” the analyst believes.
He said that toward the end of the war, in 1988, the regime carried out mass executions of political prisoners, mainly members and supporters of the MEK and leftist groups. These executions eliminated the remaining organized opposition inside the country and became a decisive step in consolidating clerical rule through intimidation and violence.
In his opinion, despite brutal repression, censorship, and restrictions on public life, there was still no nationwide mass popular uprising against the regime at that point, as society prioritized survival and national defense over internal political confrontation.
However, a new phase began with what later became known as the “chain murders,” Karimi said. “These assassinations and disappearances of intellectuals, writers, translators, and political activists began earlier than commonly assumed and continued over several years. They revealed a systematic policy by elements of the intelligence apparatus to silence independent voices and critics of the system.”
The public exposure of these murders destroyed any belief in the possibility of reform from within the system and fundamentally changed Iranian society’s perception of the nature and limits of the regime. “This shift in perception laid the groundwork for open confrontation,” the expert believes.
He said this process culminated in the 1999 student protests, the first large-scale street movement involving broad segments of society since the revolution.
“From that point onwards, the idea of regime change gradually entered public discourse, and uprisings became cyclical, broader, and increasingly confrontational,” the analyst said.
As reported by Ukrinform, the current protests in Iran began on December 28, 2025, after the Iranian rial rapidly lost value against the U.S. dollar. The currency’s depreciation, which primarily affected prices of essential consumer and imported goods, triggered mass protests initially among traders at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. Students and residents of major cities soon joined them, followed later by people in smaller towns. Demonstrators took to the streets in 27 of Iran’s 31 provinces.
Security forces responded harshly, using force and tear gas to disperse protesters. At the outset, the protests proceeded without arrests or casualties, but in the first days of the new year reports emerged of the first death.
On January 14, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported that the death toll from nationwide protests in Iran had exceeded 2,500 people.
At the same time, according to the local outlet Iran International, at least 12,000 protesters were killed in Iran on the direct orders of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Photos provided by Mohsen Behzad Karimi