Social Dynamics in Iran: The Current Situation and Trends
On 28 December 2025, economically motivated protests started by shopkeepers in Tehran spread across the country within a short time. The dramatic fall of the rial, inflation exceeding 40 percent and food inflation reaching 70 percent stand out as the main economic triggers of the protests. Although the protests did not draw crowds on the scale of the Green Movement or the Mahsa Amini demonstrations, they entered the record as one of the most violent episodes in modern Iranian history.
The Iranian economy has been in serious contraction under the maximum pressure sanctions in force since 2018 and the international isolation that deepened after the Israel-Iran clashes of June 2025. President Masoud Pezeshkian’s budget bill, which raises security spending by 150 percent while holding wage increases to two-fifths of inflation, has deepened discontent across a broad spectrum, from the urban middle class to the regime’s traditional conservative base. Setting aside the presence and provocations of armed groups, the positions taken by different social strata during the latest protests clearly reflect the transformation under way in the regime’s sociological foundation. The under-30 population, which forms the most decisive dynamic of the protests, has been growing steadily more radical since the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests, and rising youth unemployment is deepening the ideological separation between this group and the establishment.
The posture of the conservative camp
During the latest protests the conservative camp has divided into at least three distinct sub-layers. The first is the ultra-conservative wing close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Members of parliament with close ties to the IRGC reacted most harshly to the protests. The MP for Mashhad and head of the Majlis Article 90 Commission, Nasrollah Pejmanfar, for instance, openly stated that former president Rouhani should be executed for his policies of engagement with the West. Another hardline MP, Amir Hossein Sabeti, targeted the Pezeshkian government directly, condemning the opening of indirect negotiations with the United States (while exempting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the system itself from the talks). This wing defines the protests entirely as a “US-Israeli project” and characterizes any form of dialogue as “an invitation to the collapse of the regime.”
The second group consists of the pragmatic conservatives clustered around Qalibaf. Majlis Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said that “ill-intentioned individuals and organized movements” were trying to turn demands into chaos, while also stressing that the public’s concerns about making ends meet had to be addressed responsibly. During his visit to Khomeini’s shrine on 3 February, Qalibaf issued a more telling warning: the “stone thrown from outside” was manageable, and the real danger lay in “the rails being destroyed” and “the engine weakening.” These words are an implicit admission that the threat comes from internal fracture, from erosion within the governing structure and from a society that no longer obeys. At the same time Qalibaf sustains the security discourse, saying that in the event of a US attack all American bases in the region would be struck. This dual posture shows that the pragmatic conservatives are trying to manage the tension between domestic reform and external threat.
The third layer consists of guardians of the system such as Sadeq Larijani, head of the Expediency Discernment Council. Larijani’s approach — “criticism is the nation’s right, but it must not send signals to the enemy” — reflects the traditional conservative reflex of acknowledging discontent while keeping it within the state’s security framework.
The posture of the reformist camp
Pezeshkian’s election in 2024 opened up space for the reformists once again, but the failure to deliver on his promises has rapidly eroded that base. During the protests Pezeshkian initially adopted a conciliatory posture, but as the movement evolved towards demands for regime change he shifted to a harsh discourse blaming the United States and Israel. For Pezeshkian, reformist though he may be, is ultimately part of the system. That said, given the government’s limited influence over the security policies run by the establishment, it can be assumed that it had almost no involvement in how the protests were suppressed.
By the end of January, dissenting voices began to rise from within the reformist camp. A declaration attributed to former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, who remains under house arrest, used the words: “In how many different ways must the people say that they do not want this system and do not believe your lies? Enough. The game is over.” Mousavi called on the security forces to “lay down your weapons and step out of the path of power,” and demanded that this take place without foreign intervention, through a constitutional referendum and a democratic transition. Reformist leader Mehdi Karroubi, himself released from house arrest, described the deaths during the protests as “a crime whose dimensions tongue and pen are powerless to convey,” adding that “Iran’s wretched condition today is the direct result of Khamenei’s destructive domestic and foreign policies.”
On 9 February the security forces detained the head of the Reform Front, Azar Mansouri, the former diplomat Mohsen Aminzadeh and the former MP Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, who had signed that declaration, on charges of “organizing and directing extensive activities aimed at disrupting the political and social order of the country.” The Fars News Agency, close to the IRGC, linked the arrests of the journalist Mehdi Mahmoudian, the activist Abdollah Momeni and Vida Rabbani to their having carried Mousavi’s declaration out of house arrest.
The reformist movement is today being pulled in three directions: those who, along the Mousavi-Karroubi line, have relatively broken with the system and demand a democratic transition; the shrinking group that still hopes for gradual reform from within the regime; and figures such as Hassan Rouhani who move more quietly. Beyond all this, it can be said that in the eyes of the protesters on the street the reformists too are seen as “part of the regime.”
Detained reformist politician released
According to the Cameran website, the head of the Reform Front, Mansouri, has been released on bail.
The head of the Reform Front, Mansouri, had been detained along with several reformist politicians on the grounds of “conduct contrary to the constitution.”
The detained spokesman of the Reform Front, Javad Emam, and Ebrahim Asgharzadeh had been released the previous day.
Internal balances, external pressures and the succession threshold
The loyalty of the security forces and institutional cohesion are the fundamental factors keeping the regime standing. Yet Qalibaf’s warning that “negligence and miscalculation will carry a heavy cost,” together with Judiciary Chief Mohseni Ejei’s effort to calm the base, suggests that even senior officials do not regard the present course as sustainable. The suppression of the protests has not eliminated social anger; on the contrary, it has stored it up as suppressed energy.
In sum, Iranian society is passing through a period in which support for the regime has eroded without fully dissolving, in which opposition has spread while remaining unorganized, and in which external pressure both triggers and complicates social dynamics. It is clear that a possible succession process after Khamenei has the potential to reshape not only the regime’s internal balances but the region’s power equations as well.
This article was first published in Anadolu Agency on February 13, 2026.
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