Widespread demonstrations have swept Iran in recent days, as discontent grows over the government's mishandling of the country's energy infrastructure and resources.
The discontent is justified; blackouts are affecting millions of citizens. The latest round of public anger raises a recurring question for those who want change in Iran: will protests work? The Green Movement in 2009 inspired thousands to hit the streets, only to be met with a brutal crackdown. Demonstrations in recent years have ended similarly. Today, living conditions are only getting worse, and the country has just seen the election of its most hardline president in years.
A more moderate strategy for change advocates gradual reform from within traditional power structures. Judging from his past statements and positions, it does not appear likely that incoming President Ebrahim Raisi will embrace such reform. And as the deep state embodied by Iran's powerful security apparatus deepens, so will the entrenchment of others with an interest in maintaining the status quo.
But faith in the public's ability to enact change within the system is diminishing – not only in Iran itself, but elsewhere in the region where the regime in Tehran projects its reach. Unreliable power has become a central issue for demonstrators in Lebanon and Iraq, where resource management is controlled by institutions largely beholden to Iran or its regional proxies. The bungled responses by governments in each is affecting the situation in the other.
Despite its own vast energy reserves in the form of oil and natural gas, Iraq, to the anger of many citizens, chooses to import Iranian energy and pursue inexplicable policies such gas flaring. Iranians, meanwhile, cannot understand why their energy is leaving the country in its hour of need. In Lebanon, dysfunctional partisan governance that is in part driven by Iran-backed parties has led to the failure of much of the national grid. Iran's commitment to fund these parties only amplifies the sense among disaffected Iranians that public money is being wasted abroad.
Iran is a diverse country. For any protest movement to mean something a cross-section of citizens would have to participate. This appears to be happening. Dissent has been registered in the capital Tehran, Kazeroun in the south, Golestan province in the north, as well as Shiraz in Fars province.
Any hope inspired by Iranians demanding better should not detract from the fact that this latest round of action has been sparked by tragedy. One video purports to show children dying in a paediatric intensive care unit that lost power. But an inability to prevent such catastrophic failings is, in a hard-headed sense, a threat to the legitimacy of a system that claims to have been created by the people, for the people.
No one knows if today's events presage even slight change for the better. But the whole drama of recent uprisings in the region illustrates how people’s daily suffering can swell into instability or forced change.
