Shopkeepers across Iran who closed their businesses in protest at soaring inflation and dire economic conditions have not done so silently. They have used social media to voice their participation, sometimes with biting humour.
“Who says things are expensive? You can buy a cow [an idiot] with one million,” a clothes shop in the southern city of Ahwaz posted on Instagram on Wednesday.
The number appears to be a mocking reference to a newly-announced government subsidy of one million tomans – 10 million rials or about $10– to all Iranians as officials attempted to calm public unrest.
Other business owners have responded online with apparent bitterness and anger, in tandem with the growing countrywide protests.
“Until the market calms down, we too will not be posting any spurious content. It’s not normal for us to behave normally,” a restaurant in northern Tehran posted.
Shopkeepers and tradespeople began shutting down their businesses in late December, in protest at the rial's fall to a record low against the US dollar, worsening already dire living conditions in the country of 91 million people.
The rial has lost 35 per cent of its value against the dollar since mid-November and is trading at more than 146,000 rials to the dollar, according to The National’s calculations using data from bonbast.com, which monitors free market exchange rates in Iran. Meanwhile, inflation soared to more than 42 per cent last month, amid shortages of basics such as cooking oil and eggs.
The protests, now in their 13th day, have swollen to include all of Iran’s 31 provinces, as well as the capital, Tehran, and other urban centres such as Mashhad, a major religious pilgrimage centre for Shiite Muslims.
A video skit posted by a car repair shop owner, showing him closing its metal shutters and telling a friend that the “economic situation is rotten”, has been watched more than 30 million times in a week.
At least 42 people have been killed in clashes with security forces, including five under-18s and eight security personnel, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana). Internet blackouts have made it was almost impossible to communicate with anyone inside Iran since Thursday.
The collapse in the value of Iran’s currency prompted shopkeepers to shut down because the cost of replacing stock is simply too high, Mehrad Ebad, a senior member of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, said.
“We have seen multi-percentage inflation overnight,” he told The National in a voice note from Tehran before the internet cuts began.
Many of the business owners’ grievances are not new, and stem from systematic economic mismanagement and successive governments’ unwillingness or inability to address private sector demands, he added.
International sanctions on Iran have been compounded by what he called “domestic sanctions” – the state responses to the international curbs. “It was these very policies that made the working conditions worse,” said Mr Ebad.
The US reimposed heavy sanctions on Iran when Tehran pulled out of an agreement over the country’s nuclear programme in 2018. Efforts to seal a new deal last year hit a dead end. Since then, the “snapback” of UN sanctions has deepened uncertainty, Mr Ebad said. It squeezed Iran when its economy was already reeling.
The sanctions again froze Iranian assets abroad, halted arms deals with Tehran and penalised any development of Iran’s ballistic missile programme, among other measures.
“After the snapback, the fact that Iran's situation is still uncertain – what we in Iran refer to as a ‘no-war, no-peace’ scenario – unfortunately creates this instability, and this uncertainty about the future is effectively devaluing Iran's national currency.”
Alongside economic grievances, Iranians have begun to voice political demands. Verified video footage from the BBC’s Persian language service from cities including Mashhad, Tabriz and Shazand showed protesters cursing supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the security forces, and voicing support for Iran’s royal family, who were ousted from power in the 1979 revolution.
On Friday, Mr Khamenei accused protesters of acting on behalf of US President Donald Trump, saying rioters were attacking public property.
Mr Ebad said that the government of President Masoud Pezeshkian appears to be more responsive to protesters’ demands than previous governments, and has begun meeting business representatives to address their concerns.
The budget for the next Iranian year, which begins in March, was presented to parliament five days before the protests erupted and aims to remove exchange rate subsidies for importers, freeing up cash to provide direct subsidies to individuals and households.
But as the sarcastic responses on social media indicate, many Iranians are not convinced that new measures will be enough to respond to their grievances.
“Unfortunately, it may be a little late to be thinking about reforms now, but in Iran there is a saying that 'a fish is always fresh out of water' – it’s never too late to start,” Mr Ebad said. “I hope these reforms will be implemented right through to the end. They should be carried out in such a way that people's incomes and living standards improve.”
