The Protests of 2017–2018 and November 2019

Between December 2017 and November 2019 Iran saw two waves of nationwide protest driven by economic hardship. The first began in Mashhad on 28 December 2017 and spread to dozens of towns within days; the second broke out on 15 November 2019, when the government suddenly raised petrol prices, and was crushed within a week under a near-total internet shutdown. Rights groups describe the November 2019 crackdown as the deadliest in the Islamic Republic’s history up to that time.

Why people came out

Both waves grew from economic grievance. Hopes raised by the 2015 nuclear deal (see Rouhani and the JCPOA) had faded; unemployment among the young was high; several unlicensed credit institutions had collapsed and taken people’s savings; and a leaked budget at the end of 2017 showed large sums for religious foundations alongside cuts to cash handouts. After the US withdrawal from the deal in 2018 and the return of sanctions, the rial fell sharply and prices of food and medicine soared.

What surprised observers was where the protests happened. Unlike 2009, the main protagonists were not the Tehran middle class but working-class and lower-middle-class people in provincial towns, places that had been considered loyal to the system.

Dey 1396: December 2017 to January 2018

The first protest, in Mashhad on 28 December 2017, was over high prices; some reports suggested conservative opponents of President Rouhani had encouraged it. Within days protests had spread to about eighty towns and cities, including Kermanshah, Izeh, Dorud and Qahderijan. The slogans quickly went beyond prices, attacking the Leader, the clergy and spending on wars in Syria and Lebanon, under chants such as “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran”. Some protesters chanted in praise of the Pahlavi monarchy.

The authorities blocked Telegram and Instagram, the most popular messaging apps, and security forces dispersed crowds. A reformist MP, Mahmoud Sadeghi, said about 3,700 people had been arrested; official figures were lower. Several detainees died in custody, which officials described as suicides. Pro-government rallies were organised from 30 December, and by early January the wave had subsided.

The girls of Enqelab Street

On 27 December 2017, the day before the protests began, a young woman, Vida Movahed, stood on a utility box on Enqelab (Revolution) Street in Tehran, took off her white headscarf and waved it on a stick. Photos of her spread online, and in the following weeks other women copied her. The “girls of Enqelab Street” became an early sign of the protests over compulsory hijab that later grew into the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

2018–2019: strikes and smaller protests

Unrest continued in other forms during 2018 and 2019: strikes by truck drivers, teachers and workers at the Haft Tappeh sugar factory, protests by bazaar merchants in Tehran in June 2018 as the currency fell, and local protests over water shortages in Khuzestan and Isfahan.

Aban 1398: the November 2019 uprising

Just after midnight on Friday 15 November 2019, the government announced that the price of petrol would rise by 50 per cent for the first 60 litres a month and triple above that. The money, it said, would fund cash payments to poorer families. Within hours, drivers blocked roads, and protests spread to more than 100 cities. Some banks, petrol stations and government buildings were set on fire. On 16 November Leader Ali Khamenei backed the decision and described those attacking property as “thugs”.

That evening the authorities shut down almost all internet access across the country, cutting connectivity to a few per cent of normal levels for about a week, according to the monitoring group NetBlocks. Under this blackout security forces used live ammunition. Witnesses and rights groups described shootings in Tehran’s working-class suburbs, in Shiraz and in Khuzestan, where The New York Times reported that dozens of protesters were killed in marshland near the town of Mahshahr.

Counting the dead

The death toll of November 2019, known as آبان خونین (Aban-e khunin, Bloody Aban), is still disputed:

• An Iranian parliamentary official said in 2020 that about 230 people had been killed, including security personnel.
• Amnesty International documented at least 304 deaths, including children, by name and circumstance.
• Reuters reported in December 2019, citing three Interior Ministry officials, that about 1,500 people had been killed; the government called the figure false.

Thousands were arrested; an Iranian member of parliament put the figure at about 7,000. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reported torture in detention and death sentences for some protesters. Families of those killed, such as the parents of Pouya Bakhtiari, a young engineer shot in Karaj, were pressured not to hold public memorials.

How the protests are understood

The government blamed foreign enemies, the exiled opposition and the monarchists for organising violence, and said security forces had acted against armed rioters. Many analysts, including sociologists in Iran, saw instead a break between the state and the poorer groups it had long counted as its base, and a shift from demands for reform to rejection of the system. The two waves also showed the state’s growing reliance on internet controls. Two months later, the downing of Flight 752 brought students back onto the streets. For earlier protest movements, see 1999 and 2009.