Robin Wright writes:

In mid-November, in a surprise overnight announcement, the revolutionary regime in Iran hiked the price of gasoline. By standards anywhere else in the world, it is still pitifully cheap. A litre of gas increased from eight cents to twelve cents—or to fifty cents per gallon—for the first fifteen gallons each month. That’s about a tankful for a large car. After that, gas went up to ninety cents per gallon. (The U.S. average is around two dollars and sixty cents per gallon.) The price hike nevertheless triggered instant outrage. During the next four days, protests erupted in a hundred cities across the country. The theocracy responded with ruthless brutality. Hundreds, at least, were killed.

“As the truth is trickling out of Iran, it appears the regime could have murdered over a thousand Iranian citizens since the protests began,” Brian Hook, the U.S. special representative for Iran, said at a State Department briefing about the unrest, on Thursday. At least seven thousand were detained, and “many thousands” were wounded, he said. To curtail the protests and contain reports about it, Iran cut off access to the Internet. After access was restored, the State Department set up a tip line on Telegram, for Iranians to submit video, photos, and other evidence of the government crackdown. Hook said that it received more than thirty-two thousand responses.

The protests represented the widest unrest since the 2009 Green Movement uprising over alleged fraud in a Presidential election. They were the deadliest since the 1979 revolution, which ousted the last dynasty. By the government’s own count, protesters torched more than seven hundred and thirty banks, destroyed a hundred and forty government sites, and attacked fifty police-force bases.

The protests quickly escalated from being about the price of gasoline to being about the future of the theocracy. “Have shame, dictator—leave the country alone!” protesters shouted in Mashhad, Iran’s holy city, normally a bastion of conservative support for the Islamic Republic. The term “dictator” refers to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader for the past three decades. In the oil-rich Khuzestan Province, demonstrators chanted against President Hassan Rouhani: “Have shame, Rouhani—leave the country alone!” [Continue reading…]