A normal life. A simple life. A dignified life. That is what most Iranians say they want.
How to achieve that – and who could provide such conditions – are often points of contention. Grievances with the current clerical leadership have spurred frequent demonstrations in recent decades, but few as widespread or deadly as those which have gripped Iran this month.
Weeks of protests that started in late December amounted to the largest civil unrest in Iran in more than a decade, and resulted in the deaths of nearly 4,000 people, most of them protesters, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
The protests began as a response to a calamitous drop in the value of the Iranian rial against the US dollar, but spread to encompass political demands for an end to restrictive clerical rule under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The Iranian government said legitimate demonstrations over economic conditions had been hijacked by US and Israeli-sponsored rioters who killed protesters and members of the security forces. Many Iranians refute those accusations.
What Iranians want
But while the status quo has prevailed, many do not agree with it. They see Iran’s clerical leadership as glorifying a 47-year-old Islamic revolution that does not reflect their needs or desires.
In interviews, a dozen Iranians in the Turkish border city of Van, those in Europe and in the US described anger and frustration over what they see as the clerical leadership's mishandling of the economy and prioritisation of regional influence over the people's quality of life. They begrudge widespread restrictions on their lifestyles, including what they wear, how they socialise, what music they listen to and what television stations they watch.
Some in Van, a major destination for Iranian tourists, had come to use the internet during the unrest, when communications were cut off. Others habitually split their time between Van and Iran, earning higher wages in Turkey than they could ever dream of back at home, where pay often hovers between $100 and $200 a month.
“Why would I come here, far away from my city and my family, to work, if I was able to do so in my home country?” one man from an ethnically Turkic-majority part of north-western Iran told The National. “Our economy is destroyed. I earn three times as much here in a month as I can in Iran.”
One woman, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity, expressed a widely held view that revenue from Iran’s vast oil and gas reserves had not benefitted its people.
“We want to be able to use our natural resources,” she said. “People want to be able to get married and raise their children without having basic concerns about being able to have the basic essentials of life – food, a home and so on. This state can’t offer people a good life – it doesn’t want to. They are thieves.”
With a group of other Iranian women, she was planning to head to a nightclub later in the evening.
“Freedom means having work. Freedom means being able to have fun,” said another of the women, wrapped up in a cropped puffer jacket. “We come here to go to discos. And a disco is nothing, but it’s not allowed in Iran.”
Attempts to address grievances
Enforcement of mandatory headscarf rules for women has been relaxed since a wave of protests in 2022 sparked by the death in police custody of a young woman, Mahsa Amini. Last week, Iranian state TV interviewed a woman who was not wearing a headscarf but blurred her hair.
The state also appears to be trying to address economic grievances: inflation is running at more than 40 per cent and the rial's value has collapsed against the dollar.
President Masoud Pezeshkian, a relative moderate, the Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, and Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said in a joint statement on Monday that they are “committed to working around the clock” and “to utilise the capacity of the elite and the educated to solve livelihood and economic problems and ensure public security, through unity”.
Deep disillusionment
But many Iranians remain unconvinced.
Fervent opposition to the US and Israel from Tehran’s ruling elite has left Iran under heavy sanctions, causing daily struggles for businesses and people, who are cut off from the global banking system and trade.
Iranian business representatives also criticise the government's response to the sanctions, which they say has further hobbled their chances of successful trading.
“People don't like the structures, they don't like the policies, they don't like the results of the policies,” Arash Azizi, a US-based Iranian historian, writer and author of a book entitled What Iranians Want, told The National.
After so many years of economic strife, and a failed attempt last year to return to a nuclear deal that would have provided at least a partial remedy by easing sanctions in exchange for limitations on Iran’s atomic programme, it remains unclear how Tehran can turn things around.
Some Iranians – although by no means all – are critical of their government’s animosity towards Israel, which they see as opening a pathway for them to be attacked. Israel carried out surprise military strikes against Iran last June, leading to a 12-day war that left more than 1,000 Iranians dead.
“What is the point of having issues with Israel?” a man identified as DS asked rhetorically. “The mullahs keep threatening them with destruction, and so it’s like when you keep poking a cat. It’s going to scratch you back.”
Many others, including those who oppose the Islamic Republic, are suspicious of US or Israeli designs on Iran, including the idea of military strikes against the regime. That is mostly because they see foreign nations as acting in their own interests and undermining Iranians’ legitimate demands for improvements to their lives.
Foreign nations “don't care about Iranian people”, Fariba, an Iranian living in the US, told The National. “They are talking out of their national interests. But it's very difficult to say this to Iranian people, because they are under pressure and they just want someone to help them – SOS.”
No unifying alternative
Yet amid the discontent with the current system, Iranians see few people who could represent an alternative to Ali Khamenei. His role as supreme leader affords him widespread powers over Iran’s government, judiciary and parliament.
“The problem of the opposition is that it has really failed to offer an alternative, and it's a colossal failure,” said Mr Azizi.
The violent crackdown on the recent protests has increased many Iranians’ opposition to the idea that the current regime could be reformed from within to improve people’s living conditions. It has pushed them towards backing an entire reworking of the system, interviewees said.
Iranian historian and writer
That means some figures inside the country who have opposed Khamenei’s rule, and have been jailed over their political activity, are unlikely to gain popular support. They include Mostafa Tajzadeh, who briefly served as interior minister in 1998 under reformist president Mohammad Khatami, and Mir-Hossein Moussavi, a former presidential candidate who remains under house arrest.
“He [Moussavi] is under house arrest, he can’t do anything,” Fariba said. “People of Iran don’t want him, firstly because they know he is under house arrest and secondly they are against anything connected to the Islamic Republic.”
Some see exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran's former shah, as one person who could lead Iran. Some overtly support him, including many young Iranians who did not live under his father’s authoritarian monarchy, which ended with the 1979 revolution. Calls to protest by US-based Mr Pahlavi in the second week of January brought thousands of Iranians into the streets.
“I think Reza Pahlavi is the best option and the Iranian people, both inside and outside the country, are calling his name and presenting him as a leadership option,” Mohammed, an Iranian based in Germany, told The National.
Others said they supported him only because no other figure was forthcoming, and Reza Pahlavi had name recognition among many Iranians.
“Well, we don’t have an alternative to the son of the Shah, at the moment there is no other choice,” the man identified as DS said. “After the regime goes, I support the idea that there are free elections, everyone can have a vote and choose who they want.”
But Mr Pahlavi is a highly divisive figure. He represents part of the diaspora that some accuse of being out of touch with the realities of people’s lives inside the country, and more aligned with US and Israeli interests than Iranian priorities.
Ideologies put forward by Mr Pahlavi’s staff are also far from those of a democratic utopia, and are “scary” said Mr Azizi. The Shah's rule was characterised by brutal suppression of dissent by the secret police, known as the Savak. The coterie around the king grew vastly wealthy while many Iranians lived in poverty, and non-Persian ethnic minority groups faced military crackdowns.
“It's authoritarian, it's regressive, it's anti feminist. They hate the left, feminists and progressives as much as they hate the regime,” Mr Azizi said.
To this day, memories of the Shah’s rule mean many of Iran’s Azeri, Kurdish and other minority groups do not trust a return to the monarchy.
“As Turkic people, and the Kurds, we don’t like Pahlavi. We had problems with the Pahlavi family in the past,” said another man in Van as he sipped tea and ordered cake. “Any leader who can improve the economy is acceptable to us.”
The idea of imposed rule from outside is also not palatable to many Iranians. One member of an Iranian Kurdish opposition group, based in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, admitted that it “was not known” who could lead an alternative to the Islamic Republic.
“But if they are imposed from abroad, so that he does not present his own political programme for the future of all the people of Iran, does not accept the demands of the people, and does not win a vote in a democratic election, the people will not accept it,” the official said.
Some Iranians also support the current system. In the most recent presidential election in 2024, around 13.5 million people out of the 61 million strong electorate voted for ultraconservative candidate Saeed Jalili, suggesting that the current system has some backing within the country.
International sanctions on Iran have played a large role in crippling the economy, although not all who oppose them necessarily support the Islamic Republic. The government positions itself as a staunch obstacle to western expansionism in the Middle East and central Asia, appealing to many who oppose the repetition of failed western interventions.
“If they want to lay their hands on our Iran, our homeland, the brave men and women of Iran will cut off their hands,” one woman told state broadcaster IRIB.
As the Iranian government claims it will crack down on what it has described as “seditionists” and “armed terrorists” who it blames for this month’s violence, the likelihood of the leadership changing any time soon is low.
Change will most likely come from within the regime, said Mr Azizi, from people who under domestic and foreign pressure “would wrest power away from Khamenei at some point, informally or informally, and they get power”.
“Or he kicks the bucket,” he added of the 86-year-old leader, who is increasingly frail. “I don't think that after Khamenei, we will have a full-on supreme leader any more.”
