This arti­cle was pro­duced in part­ner­ship with For­eign Pol­i­cy in Focus.

The current unrest reflects the thwarted economic ambitions of a falling working class, not the thwarted political ambitions of a rising middle class.

The last time Ira­ni­ans went out onto the streets in large num­bers, they were protest­ing what they thought was a stolen election.

It was 2009, and hard­lin­er Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad had con­vinc­ing­ly won the pres­i­den­cy with rough­ly 63 per­cent to reformer Mir-Hos­sein Mousavi’s approx­i­mate­ly 34 per­cent. Adopt­ing their campaign’s green col­or, Mousavi’s sup­port­ers thronged the streets in protest.

These Green Move­ment adher­ents were most­ly mid­dle class and con­cen­trat­ed in the major cities. Ahmadine­jad, by con­trast, attract­ed the sup­port of the more reli­gious, the less well-off and the rur­al — a siz­able con­stituen­cy that the Green Move­ment rou­tine­ly underestimated.

Now it’s their turn to take to the streets: these mem­bers of the Iran­ian work­ing class who live in the boonies, who have not ben­e­fit­ed from the eco­nom­ic changes of the reformists. This is a group that ana­lyst Esfand­yar Bat­manghe­lidj calls the ​“for­got­ten men and women” of mod­ern Iran.

The cur­rent demon­stra­tions are lead­er­less, and the demands are all over the map. In gen­er­al, how­ev­er, today’s pro­test­ers seem more con­cerned with eco­nom­ic issues than polit­i­cal ones, though the two are inex­tri­ca­bly linked. For instance, unlike in 2009, the most recent demon­stra­tions have noth­ing to do with elec­tion fraud. After all, the last pres­i­den­tial elec­tion went off with­out a hitch, and some of the same peo­ple who protest­ed in 2009 returned to the streets in May 2017 to cel­e­brate the reelec­tion of reformer Has­san Rouhani.

On the eco­nom­ic side, mean­while, the reform­ers around Rouhani promised a big boost as a result of the nuclear deal with the Unit­ed States, the Euro­pean Union and oth­er coun­tries. And, indeed, the econ­o­my has grown, most­ly as a result of an uptick in oil exports. The growth rate in 2016 was 6.4 per­cent — a remark­able turn­about from the near­ly 2 per­cent con­trac­tion in 2015. That cer­tain­ly helped Rouhani win reelec­tion in May last year.

But this wealth has not trick­led down fast enough. Unem­ploy­ment has been ris­ing from around 10 per­cent in 2015 to over 12 per­cent today. The youth unem­ploy­ment rate, mean­while, hov­ers around 30 per­cent, which mir­rors the con­di­tions in a num­ber of Mid­dle East­ern coun­tries on the eve of the Arab Spring. More­over, large price increas­es in sta­ples like eggs and gas have hit the poor­er seg­ments of soci­ety hard, and the pop­u­la­tion is brac­ing for more of the same in 2018.

Iran­ian soci­ety is sharply divid­ed between haves and have-nots, its rate of eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty com­pa­ra­ble to that of the Philip­pines. The cur­rent unrest reflects the thwart­ed eco­nom­ic ambi­tions of a falling work­ing class, not the thwart­ed polit­i­cal ambi­tions of a ris­ing mid­dle class.

Ira­ni­ans are also protest­ing cor­rup­tion, which has long been a cen­tral fea­ture of eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal life in the coun­try. There have been the pre­dictable scan­dals asso­ci­at­ed with fraud in the oil indus­try. The earth­quake in Novem­ber top­pled many hous­es built by the state, reveal­ing cor­rup­tion in the con­struc­tion indus­try. The under­ground econ­o­my encour­aged by the sanc­tions régime has also gen­er­at­ed a per­va­sive cul­ture of bribery. And many Ira­ni­ans view the high salaries that go to some gov­ern­ment employ­ees as a form of cor­rup­tion as well.

Ini­tial­ly, it seems, the protests orig­i­nat­ed not with reformists, like the Green Move­ment, but with hard­lin­ers hop­ing to focus anger on Rouhani. The protests broke out, for instance, in reli­gious cen­ters Qom and Mash­had. Writes Ahmad Sadri, ​“The right-wing pow­er­ful duo of the city of Mash­had, Ebrahim Raisi (the embit­tered rival of Rouhani in the recent elec­tions) and his famous­ly sim­ple-mind­ed father-in-law, Ahmad Alam­ol­ho­da, struck the first match by stag­ing a small anti-Rouhani demon­stra­tion, blam­ing the high price of con­sumer goods on the Rouhani government.”

The con­ser­v­a­tives opened a Pandora’s box of resent­ments. Pro­test­ers in oth­er cities have sub­se­quent­ly denounced the Aya­tol­lah Khamenei and the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard. They’ve even sung the prais­es of the deposed shah and called for the return of his son.

This is a protest of pro­found disillusionment.

Washington’s Response

The Rouhani gov­ern­ment banked on a big div­i­dend com­ing from the 2015 nuclear deal.

It need­ed this infu­sion of cap­i­tal from out­side because, in real­i­ty, Rouhani has rather nar­row room for maneu­ver on eco­nom­ic issues. The reli­gious estab­lish­ment holds all the trump cards when it comes to gov­er­nance. A large state-owned sec­tor and exten­sive pub­lic ser­vices absorb a large chunk of the gov­ern­ment bud­get. Wages and salaries take up around 40 per­cent of the bud­get — and social secu­ri­ty a lit­tle over 30 per­cent. In a ​“semi-state sec­tor” bol­stered by an opaque pri­va­ti­za­tion process, con­ser­v­a­tive insti­tu­tions like the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards hold con­sid­er­able sway and are often resis­tant to any reform.

Rouhani need­ed lever­age from out­side the sys­tem because he con­trolled so few levers with­in the sys­tem. The nuclear deal was sup­posed to reduce sanc­tions, expand Iran­ian exports and attract a new wave of for­eign invest­ment. Some sanc­tions have been lift­ed (but not all). Some exports have spiked (most­ly oil). But the for­eign invest­ment has been slow to materialize.

True, some Euro­pean firms, such as the French ener­gy firm Total, have dipped their toes into the Iran­ian mar­ket. And Boe­ing secured a major civil­ian air­plane deal.

But oppo­si­tion to eco­nom­ic engage­ment with Iran was strong in Wash­ing­ton, even dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. In the wake of their defeat on the nuclear deal, hard­lin­ers in Con­gress were eager to apply new sanc­tions against Iran and reduce what lit­tle invest­ment was flow­ing toward the coun­try. Grant­ed, it’s not easy to nav­i­gate the busi­ness envi­ron­ment inside Iran. But the Unit­ed States didn’t make it any easier.

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has­n’t been shy about voic­ing its oppo­si­tion to the Iran nuclear deal. Even before the lat­est protests broke out, the admin­is­tra­tion was also explor­ing ways of killing the Boe­ing air­craft deal, as well as the Total invest­ment. Suf­fice it to say, Trump is not inter­est­ed in any kind of engage­ment with the Iran­ian government.

As soon as the protests broke out in Iran in Decem­ber, Trump glee­ful­ly took to Twit­ter to sup­port the peo­ple in the streets and cas­ti­gate the Rouhani gov­ern­ment. ​“The peo­ple of Iran are final­ly act­ing against the bru­tal and cor­rupt Iran­ian régime,” Trump tweet­ed. ​“All of the mon­ey that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma so fool­ish­ly gave them went into ter­ror­ism and into their ​‘pock­ets.’ The peo­ple have lit­tle food, big infla­tion and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!”

For Trump, the protests vin­di­cate his argu­ment that the gov­ern­ment in Tehran is ille­git­i­mate. That the protests have result­ed at least in part from U.S. poli­cies to squeeze Iran is imma­te­r­i­al to Trump and his sup­port­ers in Congress.

This has been their strat­e­gy all along. ​“The pol­i­cy of the Unit­ed States should be régime change in Iran,” Sen. Tom Cot­ton (R‑Ark.) has said. ​“I don’t see how any­one can say Amer­i­ca can be safe as long as you have in pow­er a theo­crat­ic despo­tism.” Sanc­tions are not designed to extract a ​“bet­ter deal” from Tehran or even to dis­suade it from engag­ing in ​“bad behav­ior” in the region. That’s a canard to make the Unit­ed States appear to be play­ing by the rules of respect­ing sovereignty.

The pun­di­toc­ra­cy, mean­while, has large­ly come out in sup­port of the protests, with peo­ple on both sides of the nuclear deal lay­ing down their dif­fer­ences to side with the street. Here’s Daniel Shapiro and Mark Dubowitz in Politi­co:

We are long-time friends who have dis­agreed vehe­ment­ly on the wis­dom of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran; Dan is Obama’s for­mer ambas­sador to Israel, and Mark is one of that agreement’s most per­sis­tent crit­ics. But we agree with equal pas­sion that Amer­i­cans, regard­less of par­ty or posi­tion on the nuclear deal, should be sup­port­ing the aspi­ra­tions of Ira­ni­ans to be free from their bru­tal and cor­rupt rulers.

But what are Shapiro and Dubowitz sup­port­ing exact­ly? By all means, the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment should per­mit free­dom of assem­bly. It should not respond to the protests with vio­lence. And who can­not sym­pa­thize with peo­ple who are fed up with unem­ploy­ment and cor­rup­tion and want to exer­cise their right of self-determination?

But these protests are not the Green Move­ment. The cur­rent demon­stra­tors don’t have a sin­gle, coher­ent pro­gram. They don’t appear to have ral­lied behind any­thing to replace the cur­rent gov­ern­ment. They are, like the groundswell of sup­port for Don­ald Trump, a move­ment defined by oppo­si­tion to the sta­tus quo. It’s not imme­di­ate­ly clear what alter­na­tive sys­tem such pro­test­ers would sup­port, but it’s just as like­ly to be some­thing reli­gious­ly pop­ulist along the lines of Ahmadine­jad as any­thing resem­bling sec­u­lar liberalism.

Barack Oba­ma received crit­i­cism from the Left and the Right for not throw­ing U.S. sup­port behind the Green Move­ment. The stakes were clear­er then — a hard­line pres­i­dent with dubi­ous legit­i­ma­cy on one side ver­sus a mass move­ment with lead­ers and a pro­gram. Today, the stakes are con­sid­er­ably mud­di­er. But Trump, who cares so lit­tle about Ira­ni­ans that he’s blocked them from enter­ing the Unit­ed States regard­less of their affil­i­a­tions, is inter­est­ed only in the larg­er game: scor­ing points against Oba­ma and the Iran­ian lead­er­ship and scor­ing points for Sau­di Ara­bia and Israel.

Come Jan­u­ary 13, when Trump has anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to can­cel U.S. par­tic­i­pa­tion in the nuclear agree­ment, he will like­ly do so in the name of the Iran­ian peo­ple, the very ones who have tak­en to the streets because Trump and oth­ers like him are deter­mined to make sure that the agree­ment ulti­mate­ly doesn’t pro­vide any real eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to the Iran­ian peo­ple. His sup­port­ers on the Right are already giv­ing him the ammu­ni­tion to gun down the deal in this way.

What Goes Around

Trump imme­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fied the pro­test­ers as his kind of peo­ple — angry at polit­i­cal elites, upset that eco­nom­ic ​“reforms” have not ben­e­fit­ed them, dis­gust­ed with the cor­rup­tion of the sys­tem. Trump knows a ​“throw the elites out” kind of move­ment when he sees one.

The groundswell of anger in Iran match­es the rage felt by peo­ple all over the world at the greed and clue­less­ness of their lead­ers. So far, manip­u­la­tive so-called pop­ulists have man­aged to trans­late this anger into elec­toral suc­cess — in Hun­gary, Rus­sia, the Philip­pines and the Unit­ed States. The most like­ly polit­i­cal actor to take advan­tage of this anger in Iran would walk and talk like Ahmadine­jad and embrace posi­tions that are more anti-Amer­i­can, anti-Sau­di and anti-Israel than those of the cur­rent government.

Trump should be care­ful when he sup­ports a move­ment in Iran like that, and not just because it prob­a­bly wouldn’t pro­duce a more U.S.-friendly régime. Trump is already fac­ing some­thing sim­i­lar. After all, the pres­i­dent is now unde­ni­ably a mem­ber of the polit­i­cal elite. He’s the one imple­ment­ing eco­nom­ic reforms that don’t ben­e­fit the vast major­i­ty. He’s the one mak­ing gobs of mon­ey off of the sys­tem. And, as in Iran, he’s the one backed by pow­er­ful reli­gious fanatics.

In short, Trump is now the elite that a grow­ing move­ment wants to throw out of the White House. When the time comes, will Mark Dubowitz and his con­ser­v­a­tive brethren sim­i­lar­ly defend Amer­i­can cit­i­zens who aspire ​“to be free from their bru­tal and cor­rupt rulers”?