[Edward64]

Good read on the current protests. I really do hope this results in some change.

The Iranian government fails to contain mass protests, despite brutal tactics - Vox

Still, more than 300 have been killed during the protests. That number includes roughly 50 children under 18, the New York Times’ Farnaz Fassihi reported last week. But casualties and arrests are difficult to track; social media and internet access have been severely curtailed, and foreign reporters can’t access the country. Thus far, five protesters are set to be executed for participating in the uprising.

But there are signs that the regime is not fully in control of the riot police, whom Daragahi described as either thugs or religious zealots, which puts it in a precarious position.

“People are getting killed because it’s a mess; they’re unprofessional and they can’t do proper crowd control,” Daragahi explained. “Basically, when you let the dogs out of their cages, this dynamic erupts. No one is going around and executing children on the street; they’re just reckless and evil, thugs, who are hired to go and crack down on this protest. They have very little experience.”

Still hard for me to tell if this is for real (e.g. widespread & sustainable) or just wishful thinking.

The current social movement is spreading in the following ways: students in major universities (112 universities and counting) are on strike; high school students are walking out of classrooms; street protests are occurring almost every night, especially on Wednesdays, and on the traditional 40th day of passing of each “martyr” killed by security forces.

“It’s really touching and kind of unprecedented even, perhaps, globally, this kind of feminist angle, and it is real,” Daragahi said. “The men supporting the women, the schoolgirls going out and protesting by day, the schoolboys going out and rioting against the police at night, people backing each other up, people cheering on the women as they take off their hijabs and so on. This whole feminist angle of it is quite singular, for a political revolution in any country.”

However, the country’s elite seem to be surviving the economic free-fall and maintaining their support for and ties to the regime, too, Vaez said. “We have seen no serious defections so far,” among the country’s well-connected and powerful upper class. Despite “the abject failures of the regime to improve the country’s economic well-being,” the highest echelons of society have, at least publicly, refused to stand up to those in power.