A wave of anti-regime protests erupted on the streets of the capital, Tehran, and other cities amid reports of Iranian currency plunging to a historic low. “Shopkeepers in the capital have closed their stores, and mass demonstrations have broken out in response to the rial’s fall,” the Jerusalem Post reported on Monday. “Clashes have reportedly broken out across multiple streets in Tehran, with authorities using tear gas to disperse the protesters, according to footage of the events.”
Protesters were heard chanting ‘Death to the Dictator’ Ali Khamenei and raising pro-monarchist slogans. “Iranian police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at thousands of merchants protesting soaring prices and the collapse of the local currency,” the Israel Hayom newspaper reported on Monday. “In a rare development, demonstrators also chanted slogans in support of the shah and the former royal family.”
“Monday’s protests were the biggest since 2022,” The Associated Press noted. Iran last witnessed a large-scale uprising in 2022 and 2023, with nationwide protests after the regime’s “morality police” killed 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for not wearing a ‘proper’ hijab. Iran’s Islamic Guards (IRGC) and regime militia crushed those protests using deadly force.
With President Donald Trump’s policy of Maximum Pressure back in place after four years of sanctions easing and appeasement under Biden’s reign, the Mullah regime is feeling the full force of U.S.-led Western sanctions. “The rial, which has been falling as the Iranian economy has suffered from the impact of Western sanctions, fell to a new record low on Monday at around 1,390,000 to the dollar,” Reuters reported, citing open source data. The Iranian rial went from 0.86 million to the dollar last year under Biden to over 1.40 million this weekend.
With currency in free fall, the governor of Iran’s Central Bank stepped down on Monday. “Iran’s central bank chief, Mohammad Reza Farzin, has resigned, the semi-official Nournews agency reported on Monday, citing an official at the president’s office, as the country battles a slump in its rial currency and high inflation,” the news outlet reported.
Tehran’s traders and shopkeepers are leading the protests, an uncanny reminder of how the 1979 unrest began, unseating the Iranian monarch. Ayatollah Khomeini hijacked the uprising to establish an Islamic regime. The Associated Press noted that “hundreds of traders and shopkeepers rallied in Saadi Street in downtown Tehran as well as in the Shush neighborhood near Tehran’s main Grand Bazaar. Merchants at the market played a crucial role in the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted the monarchy and brought Islamists to power.”
The similarities don’t end there. The toppled Iranian central bank chief is called Mohammad Reza Farzin; his namesake, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was ousted as ‘Shah’ in 1979.
An iconic footage captured on a cellphone shows a lone protester defiantly sitting on the road as he faces off against several dozen armed riot policemen on motorbikes.
A social media account in the Farsi language, reportedly belonging to Israel’s Mossad, tweeted in solidarity with the ongoing protests. It is unlikely that the Israeli intelligence agency would stage any operation on the ground, but it would certainly rattle the paranoid Mullahs clinging to power in Tehran. During the 12 Day War this summer, Israel — likely aided by intelligence gathered by Mossad — eliminated the top echelons of the Iranian military and security apparatus.
The Israel National News/Arutz Sheva reported:
Meanwhile, a social media account on X, associated with the Israeli Mossad in Farsi, published a call for residents to join the protests and even hinted at its presence at the location.
The tweet read, “Come together to the streets. It’s time. We are with you – not just from afar and in words. We are with you on the ground as well.”
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