On December 28, 2017, a small protest in the city of Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city, sparked a movement against the current Iranian government, spreading across the country.  

The groups of protesters are primarily made up of working-class civilians, under the age of 25, who’ve experienced major hardship under Iran’s struggling economy. Iran’s economy is primarily based in the oil sector, where it operates many enterprises and controls many companies to some degree. Although Iran has the potential to strengthen its economy, political interference, along with many other contributing factors, continue to restrict growth.  

The Iranian government has had a long history of conflict of with its citizens. Some of these conflicts involve religion, which normally leads to forcing those who don’t follow Islam, Iran’s primary religion, out of the country. But more often than not, their conflicts involve money, money that the citizens of Iran are not seeing because of their government’s tumultuous economic policy.

In 2015, Iran struck a deal with six major world powers. The goal of the Iran Nuclear Deal was not only to support those countries who had participated in that exchange, but also to lift trade sanctions that had been placed on Iran in previous decades. It was meant to open up Iran’s relations and hopefully improve the country’s economy. But their citizens have not seen much improvement. So after 3 years and many broken promises later, the people were fed up. They took to the streets and have been protesting for over a week now.

What’s different about these protests is not only that they’re spread around the country, instead of being focused in Tehran, Iran’s capital, but also that there are many different groups of people protesting.

Protests in Iran were normally been led by educated, upper-class individuals in the past. But now with the working-class being greatly affected by these unkempt promises, they have been leading these protests in hopes that something will change.

This publication sides with the working-class citizens of Iran in their attempt to create positive change. As we have seen in the past, there is no such thing as a perfect government. Because we live in a democratic nation we believe that The People play an integral role in establishing their rights and keeping the government in check when they’re abusing their power. Although Iran is a theocracy, there is no reason for them to not be fulfilling their duty in serving the people.

It is important to recognize that corruption surrounds us every day, but if we aren’t taking constant steps towards a better society, then we are only contributing to the problem. Let us as students and faculty understand the injustices still occurring every day in the world and take every opportunity to fight for what we believe is right.