Bread, fear and the long game of power by Zakir Hall

The protests erupting across Iran are on the surface about money. Prices rise faster than wages, subsidies shrink, the currency weakens, and ordinary life becomes an exhausting exercise in calculation. Can I buy meat this week? Can I pay rent next month? This is not ideological revolt but material anxiety, the kind that creeps quietly into kitchens and shop queues. The real question, however, is whether economic anger alone is enough to destabilise a regime that has survived war, sanctions, isolation, and repeated waves of dissent.

Economic protests are dangerous precisely because they are not abstract. They do not require a manifesto or a charismatic leader. Inflation does not need translating. When affordability collapses, loyalty erodes in small, cumulative ways. People may not shout slogans about overthrowing the system, but they stop believing its promises. That erosion matters. Yet history shows that economic pain does not automatically become political rupture, especially in a state built to absorb pressure.

The Iranian system has developed a thick skin. It has learned to treat protests as weather rather than earthquakes. Security forces are experienced, fragmented protests are contained, and the narrative is quickly reframed as foreign agitation or temporary hardship. Most crucially, the regime understands that desperation does not always lead to rebellion. Often it leads to withdrawal. People focus on survival, not revolution. They work second jobs, sell assets, lean on family networks, or leave the country if they can. This quiet adaptation reduces the energy required to sustain mass mobilisation.

There is also a structural problem with protests driven primarily by affordability. They tend to be reactive rather than strategic. Anger spikes when prices jump or subsidies vanish, then dissipates when the immediate shock fades. Without a unifying political demand, these movements struggle to evolve. Bread protests can shake a city, but they rarely build the organisational backbone needed to challenge a state. The regime can offer partial relief, cosmetic reforms, or simply wait. Time is often on its side.

That does not mean the protests are meaningless. Far from it. Each wave chips away at the myth of competence. The Islamic Republic has long justified repression with a promise of stability and resistance. When it cannot deliver basic economic security, that bargain weakens. Importantly, economic protests draw in demographics that ideological movements sometimes miss: shopkeepers, pensioners, provincial workers, and lower income families who once formed a passive base of support. Their anger is not radical, but it is corrosive.

The danger for the regime lies less in collapse and more in accumulation. Economic grievances intersect with other unresolved tensions: generational fatigue, social restrictions, corruption, and a growing sense that sacrifice is unequally distributed. When people see elites insulated from inflation while ordinary citizens slide backward, resentment deepens. The protests may not articulate regime change, but they normalise dissent. They make public anger routine rather than exceptional.

Still, destabilisation is a high bar. The Iranian state remains coherent. The military and security apparatus show no signs of fracturing. There is no organised alternative power centre, no unified opposition capable of converting street anger into institutional challenge. External pressure, often assumed to be a catalyst, can just as easily strengthen the regime’s siege mentality. In this context, economic protests alone are unlikely to topple the system.

What they can do, however, is trap it. Governing becomes more expensive, both financially and politically. More resources go into control, subsidies, and damage limitation. Less credibility remains for grand ideological claims. The regime survives, but at the cost of stagnation and distrust. This is not collapse; it is decay.

The real threat is long term. A state can withstand hunger longer than hope, but not forever. If affordability continues to deteriorate, if younger generations see no future inside the system, and if protests keep resurfacing with monotonous regularity, the question shifts. It is no longer whether one protest can destabilise the regime, but whether the regime can indefinitely manage a society that no longer believes improvement is possible. History suggests that is a far more fragile position than it appears.

For now, Iran exists in a tense middle ground, neither exploding nor healing. The streets flare, quiet, then flare again. Power holds, but inspiration thins. Economic protests are not the end of the story, yet they keep writing uncomfortable footnotes. Regimes rarely fall from a single blow. They fall when endurance outpaces belief, and belief is steadily becoming unaffordable. That is the silent arithmetic reshaping Iran today.