The 2018-19 movements, however, was truly leaderless and spontaneous. The protests also took place in small neighbourhoods and not only in business districts. Some of the protesters were what Iranian sociologist Asef Bayat called “middle class poor”. Highly educated, but with precarious employment and no prospect of finding a job suitable to their level of education, they live with precarious jobs in marginal, impoverished areas of the big cities, especially Tehran.
They started in the outskirts of Tehran rather than in the centre; they were also different types of demonstrations including teachers, workers and ordinary people in smaller towns.
So we have different mobilisations that co-existed, in different places at the same time, or sometimes in the same place. For example, even if there is no clear organic relationship between the wider street protests and workers’ protests, the two are occurring side by side, in the same cities and regions.
What were the main causes and demands behind the 2018-19 protests?
Everyone, particularly in the poorer classes, has a good reason to be angry with the system. It could be because of the economy, the political crisis or different forms of discrimination. The magnitude of the 2019 protests derives from the merging of all these grievances.
But there is also historical continuity. Between 1992 and 1995, a series of protests erupted mainly in the ‘informal settlements’ (slums) around Iran’s large cities such as Tehran (notably in Islamshahr), Mashhad, Arak and Shiraz. It was a response to the post-Iran-Iraq war structural adjustment policies and privatisation programmes that followed the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, under the guidance of the IMF’s policies. The revolts were repressed by the state through arrests, killings and intimidations, as happened in 2018-19.
We mustn’t forget the role of US economic sanctions in the revolts of 2018-19. Beside its direct economic effect on the everyday life of people, most of the time these sanctions are used as an excuse for cuts in subsidies.
Ten years ago, it was hard to find Iranians, at least in big cities, literary dying from hunger in the country because of state subsidies, but today many Iranians live under the poverty line and struggle to survive, thanks to high inflation and a minimum wage that’s less than $100.
One of the main factors was the wave of neo-liberalisation policies introduced in the post-war era and intensified under President Ahmadinejad in 2006. This resulted in many social benefits being cut. In 2012, the government launched the Resistance Economic Program, which was actually a recipe to expand these neoliberal ‘reforms’.
What were the main locations affected by the 2018-19 uprising?
Geographically speaking, the new movement included many mainly smaller cities and towns. More interestingly, it involved places that were not previously politically active.
As far as regions are concerned, Khuzestan and Kurdistan played an important part in the 2018 and 2019 uprisings, while the Green Movement protests happened almost exclusively in Persian-speaking areas.
The spread to smaller towns is a very important step, as it includes new challenges as well as new opportunities for the demonstrators. Indeed, while the youth participating in the big demonstrations in the central areas of the larger cities could always count on anonymity, this may not be the case when you’re demonstrating in a smaller town, or in your own neighbourhood.
At the same time, the spread of the protests into ‘unusual’ places has also meant much stronger popular support in the smaller towns and in the marginal areas of the metropoles.
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Gennaro Gervasio Enrico De Angelis | Radio Free (2021-03-22T06:12:59+00:00) Iran’s decade of protests: an interview with Firoozeh Farvardin and Nader Talebi. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2021/03/22/irans-decade-of-protests-an-interview-with-firoozeh-farvardin-and-nader-talebi/
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