Juan Cole: Are Iran's protests Economic or Political?

Juan Cole asks: Are Iran's protests Economic or Political?

It also appears that the protests began last Thursday [2017-12-28] with support from hard liners who were hoping to embarrass President Rouhani. The latter had put a lot of political capital behind the nuclear deal with the Security Council, on the grounds that it would end sanctions and improve the economic situation, which had become dire under Obama’s severe sanctions. The joke turned out to be on the hard liners, who started a wave of protests but lost control of them, with crowds chanting not just death to Rouhani (what the hard liners were going for) but death to Khamenei and death to the Revolutionary Guards (the very institutions the hard liners wanted to strengthen).

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One problem with the debate between Abrams and Thomas Erdbrink of the NYT is that separating out economic and political discontents is not easy, especially in Iran, where the government (as in most petro-states) owns some 80% of the economy. I think we may conclude that some voices in some of the protests have begun speaking of overthrowing the government, and the question for many protesters no longer seems to be high priced food but rather the clerical regime itself.

Emphasis Mine

That is the problem with state capitalism: economic performance and political legitimacy are intertwined.

The protests initially started as political maneuvering by the hard-liners, but ended up by attacking the legitimacy of the state.

Israel hoped to capitalise on this unrest in order to undermine the Iranian influence in the Middle East by causing the Iranian government to withdraw while saving itself.