Since December, Iran has witnessed its largest wave of anti-government demonstrations since the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom movement sparked by the death of student Mahsa Amini in police custody after she was arrested for not wearing a hijab. The latest protests, in which thousands of protestors have been killed, began in Tehran’s central bazaar in response to an economic crisis fuelled by the collapse of the Iranian rial, which at the time of writing had hit 1.4 million to the dollar. Iranians’ socio-economic woes cannot be seen in isolation from the ongoing economic sanctions on the country, the impact of which has been exacerbated by the 12-day US-Israeli war on the Islamic Republic in mid-2025.
