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Abstract: Protests are a regular feature of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Using street power to push for incremental change or voice discontent with government policy, major protests in Iran have been closely identified with the country's reform movement. But from 2017 to the present, we posit that the aim of protests has drifted from reform towards revolution. We use the observable trend of change in geography, demography, violence levels, organization/ cohesion, and slogans of protests to argue that the 2017 event was a change point: a structural break from reform to revolution. Drawing on the scholarship of Ted Robert Gurr and Alexis de Tocqueville on expectations for change and rebellion, we trace the structural and domestic political conditions that existed before 2017, and subsequently examine the five factors. We conclude with the impact this will have on future street protests in Iran and flashpoints for change.
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Introduction
Protests are a regular feature of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Using street power to advance incremental change or voice frustration with government policy, protests-such as those in 1999 and 2009-have been closely identified with the country's reform movement. However, since 2017, a new wave of anti-government demonstrations has swept the country, expressing broad discontent and a desire for revolution. To support this claim, we outline domestic conditions and analyze five measures of change across major Iranian protest movements over the past two decades. Our work draws on scholarship by Ted Robert Gurr and Alexis de Tocqueville, demonstrating how raised expectations for change produce rebellion when met with failed political realities.
Specifically, we examine four key instances of protests with the broader aim of substantiating the claim that protests have drifted from courting reform to coveting revolution. These cases include the 1999 student protests after the forced closure of a reformist publication;1 the 2009 protests over a contested presidential election that led to the Green Movement;2 the 2017-18 demonstrations;3 known as the Dev protests, which began over broad economic issues; and the late 2019 protests that were sparked by the revocation of gas subsidies.4
The five observable factors that indicate Iranian protesters' revolutionary aims are: slogans, organizational structure, demography of participants, geographic distribution of protesters, and...