Sheema Kalbasi is an Iranian American poet, writer and historian. She is a Pushcart Prize–winning poet, a recipient of a United Nations humanitarian award and a grantee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. Her books include Echoes in Exile (PRA Publishing, 2006), Spoon and Shrapnel (Daraja Press, 2024), and Jahan Malek Khatun: The Princess Poet of Fourteenth-Century Persia (Daraja Press, 2026).@iranianwoman
The wave of protests sweeping across Iran that erupted on Dec. 28, 2025, represents more than another episode of social unrest within an authoritarian system under economic strain. Rather, it reflects a profound transformation in how large segments of Iranian society understand political power, legitimacy and change. What is unfolding is not merely a reaction to immediate hardship, nor a familiar cycle of protests seen in earlier movements. Today's protests represent the maturation of a long-term political rupture, one in which the foundations of the post-1979 order are increasingly viewed as incompatible with social stability, economic survival and individual dignity.
At a surface level, the unrest reflects acute material distress across Iranian society. The national currency has reached historic lows, inflation has dramatically eroded purchasing power and access to basic necessities has become increasingly precarious. Shopkeepers, students, pensioners and wage earners have taken to the streets to protest the growing impossibility of sustaining daily life under current conditions. These grievances are not new. Similar material pressures have repeatedly fuelled unrest for two decades.
Yet the current protests mark a qualitatively distinct phase in the history of dissent under the Islamic Republic. While demonstrations in Iran have long been triggered by economic hardship, political exclusion or social repression, this uprising is defined less by its immediate causes than by the clarity of the political end state articulated by protesters.
The current protests mark a qualitatively distinct phase in the history of dissent under the Islamic Republic.
- Sheema Kalbasi
For the first time in nearly half a century, large segments of the population no longer view economic collapse, social restriction and political stagnation as isolated policy failures, nor merely as byproducts of the regime's ideological priorities. Calls for reform within the existing system, or even structural changes to it, are brushed aside. Instead, protesters increasingly call for a complete rejection of the 1979 revolution and the worldviews that produced it.
The origins of this shift can be traced to developments beginning in late 2017, when nationwide protests erupted across Iran in December and into the new year. These demonstrations marked a decisive rupture in the logic of dissent under the Islamic Republic. Unlike earlier protest movements, which were often articulated through the language of reform, elections or constitutional correction, the 2017–18 protests spread rapidly through provincial cities and economically marginalized regions, adopting an explicitly anti-regime posture.
Protesters did not appeal to reformist figures or demand improved governance within the existing political framework. Instead, their slogans rejected the political order in its entirety, collapsing distinctions between reformist and hardline factions, treating both as custodians of a failed system.
In the aftermath of these protests, the regime's claim to popular participation visibly weakened, most clearly reflected in sharply declining voter turnout. This withdrawal did not signal apathy but rather a recognition that elections and institutional mechanisms no longer offered a meaningful avenue for change.
A new patriotic discourse has emerged that frames the struggle in civilizational terms rather than purely political ones.
- Sheema Kalbasi
Similarly, the November 2019 uprising, commonly known as Aban 98, marked a decisive and irreversible break between the Islamic Republic and large segments of Iranian society. Triggered by a sudden fuel price increase, the protests quickly escalated into one of the most widespread and violently suppressed episodes of unrest in the post-1979 era. The regime's response, including a near-total internet shutdown and the reported killing of thousands of protesters within days, fundamentally transformed the relationship between state and society.
For many Iranians, Aban 98 eliminated any remaining ambiguity about the nature of power under the Islamic Republic. The speed and scale of the violence revealed that the regime no longer sought even symbolic consent during moments of crisis. This was not repression intended to restore order within a shared political framework but collective punishment that permanently severed the moral bond between rulers and the ruled. Communities that lost children, witnessed killings in the streets or were cut off from the outside world during the blackout emerged with a new understanding of the state—not as a flawed guardian, but as an occupying force.
The Woman, Life, Freedom uprising that began in September 2022 following the killing of Mahsa Amini deepened this rupture. If November 2019 exposed the regime's capacity for mass violence, Woman, Life, Freedom revealed the depth and breadth of societal rejection across gender, class and generation. What distinguished the movement was not only its scale, but its explicit refusal of ideological negotiation. Protesters rejected the regime's authority at its symbolic core, challenging compulsory veiling, clerical dominance and the foundations of the Islamic regime itself.
Although the uprising was suppressed, it produced lasting transformations in everyday behavior, social norms and political expectations. Women's defiance did not retreat with the streets; it became embedded in daily life and public space. Together, November 2019 and Woman, Life, Freedom completed the shift from disillusionment to disavowal, teaching a generation of Iranians that neither economic concession nor cultural reform could reconcile society with a system sustained by coercive ideology and brutality. The current uprising thus emerges not from sudden outrage, but from accumulated certainty that coexistence with the Islamic Republic and its ideological foundations is no longer possible.
Ultimately, the regime's visible weakening in 2025 accelerated that shift, especially during the recent twelve-day war with Israel. State efforts to mobilize patriotic sentiment, rally public support or reassert ideological unity failed to generate meaningful legitimacy. Rather than consolidating national cohesion, the conflict exposed the fragility of the regime's claims to protection, competence and authority. Six months on, appeals to endurance, sacrifice and resistance on behalf of the regime are no longer resonating with a population already bearing the cumulative costs of decades of ideological governance.
In this context, a new patriotic discourse has emerged that frames the struggle in civilizational terms rather than purely political ones. References to pre-Islamic symbols, names and imagery have become increasingly prevalent among dissidents and political activists. Protesters now articulate their resistance as an existential confrontation rather than a policy dispute. This language reflects a growing conviction that the Islamic Republic represents not only a flawed state requiring replacement, but a civilizational impasse whose continuation blocks any viable paths forward and forecloses the possibility of a national rebirth.
Street slogans, notwithstanding their necessarily compressed and partial view of political consciousness, provide important indicators of public sentiment in a country without reliable polling, free elections or functioning political parties. The slogans now heard across Iranian cities reflect not fragmentation but filtration. Discourses perceived as evasive, reformist or disconnected from lived experience have steadily lost resonance.
This recent movement could represent the most coherent challenge to the rule of the Islamic regime to date. Whether this implies imminent collapse depends on how much of the Islamic Republic's suppression capacity has remained, whether there would be defections within the ranks of the regime and how much world powers would provide actual and material support to the protesters. It may not be too long before we find out.
The views and positions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of DAWN.
