This week, shopkeepers and bazaar retailers in Iran’s main cities staged mass protests after Iran’s foreign money fell to an all-time low of 144,000 tomans to the greenback and the governor of the Central Bank of Iran, Mohammad Reza Farzin, resigned.
Protesters in Tehran confront anti-riot forces who start assaulting demonstrators – December 29, 2025
According to the Iranian Statistics Center, the inflation charge in December rose to 42.2% in comparison with the identical month final 12 months, and rose 1.8% from November. Food costs rose 72% year-on-year, whereas well being and medical objects rose 50% over the identical interval.
Protests started in Tehran on Sunday night, shortly after President Massoud Pezeshikian addressed the Majles, wherein he requested lawmakers: “We’re telling you to lift wages, however can somebody inform us the place we’ll get the cash from?”
The unrest shortly unfold from town’s central enterprise district, together with Alaeddin Shopping Center, a significant hub for cell phone buying and selling on Jomhouri Street, and Charsu Shopping Center, and reached Lalezar, a standard electronics market, the subsequent day. Merchants reported that excessive fluctuations within the rial’s trade charge in opposition to the greenback made each day transactions almost inconceivable.
On December 29, retailers in Tehran and Isfahan ceased operations in protest in opposition to the sharp rise within the greenback trade charge, the extended recession, hovering costs, elevated taxes, and punitive business rents, based on native studies and eyewitness accounts.
During the demonstrations, some within the crowd chanted slogans that went past financial grievances to brazenly problem the Islamic Republic, referencing Iran’s former monarchy in language uncommon for the nation’s historically cautious bazaar class.
As the strike unfold, teams of merchants and supporters reportedly gathered and marched by means of the market space and close by streets chanting slogans resembling:
“They used religion to manage and destroy everybody.” “Reza, Reza Pahlavi – the cry of the folks.”
“This is the final and remaining battle – Pahlavi’s return is at hand.”
“Reza Shah, your soul is alive.”
“Long dwell the Shah.”
Security forces, together with police forces and particular forces, moved in to disperse demonstrators in a number of cities. Police fired tear gasoline at demonstrators in some areas, together with Tehran and Mallard.
In Tehran, safety forces reportedly tried to disperse the demonstrators, however the strikers continued their protest, chanting “do not be afraid, we are going to stand collectively.”
Prince Reza Pahlavi launched a message to the Iranian Armed Forces. He declared that the ruling regime was “within the technique of collapsing” and referred to as on safety officers to not disobey the inhabitants.
Meanwhile, pupil activist teams on the University of Tehran and Amir Kabir University of Technology issued separate statements supporting the strike by retailers and calling on residents and college students to hitch the protests.
The Islamic Republic’s official response to the protests has been two-pronged. While the federal government has launched emergency financial measures to handle foreign money and cost-of-living pressures, security-led discourse hyperlinks financial protests to ‘enemy’ operations.
Separately, the central financial institution’s head of communications stated that on the directions of President Massoud Pezeshkian, the federal government’s financial crew convened an emergency assembly on the central financial institution to contemplate financial and livelihood insurance policies.
Hours after Farzin’s resignation as head of Iran’s central financial institution was introduced, President Masoud Pezeshkian’s workplace introduced that Abdulnasser Hemmati could be his successor.
Mr. Farzin has confronted rising criticism over the central financial institution’s failure to rein in a plunging foreign money, a failure that paved the best way for reformers to reinstate Mr. Hemmati, a number one enterprise determine, into the cupboard regardless of being impeached and sacked as economic system minister simply months earlier over rising inflation.
The change comes as bazaar strikes unfold from Tehran to cities together with Isfahan, Karaj, Kerman, Hamedan and Qeshm, highlighting the rising hyperlink between Iran’s financial disaster and rising unrest.
On December 29, Fars News Agency quoted unnamed safety sources as saying that “brokers” of the Islamic Republic’s enemies had been pushing the protests in an extremist path by turning financial grievances into political unrest.
Prince Reza Pahlavi: ‘The various to the Islamic Republic is the Iranian state’
Opinion: Reza Pahlavi’s transition plan is a roadmap for regime change