On Thursday, January 1, 1404, protests across the country were noticeably more intense in smaller cities, particularly in the provinces of Lorestan and Fars, while remaining lighter in major cities, including Tehran. Reports indicate that the government has exerted heavy pressure on bazaar merchants in Tehran, forcing them to reopen their shops.

At the same time, regions predominantly inhabited by national minorities have, so far, largely refrained from joining the nationwide protests on a mass scale. In Baluchistan, despite a some Baluch political parties who have expressed support for the protests and called on the public to participate, Molana Abdolhamid, the Friday prayer leader of Zahedan, adopted an ambiguous position, urging the government to heed the advice of those concerned for the country and to correct its conduct. In Kurdistan, despite statements from Iranian Kurdish parties backing the current  protests, which began with economic grievances and quickly evolved into political demands and calls for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, the situation, as in the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, did not progress to the point of issuing public calls from Kurdish cities to join the nationwide uprising.

Political analysts argue that the government has deliberately sought to sow divisions within the opposition by promoting monarchist slogans and calls for the return of the Pahlavi (former regime) era. These slogans, voiced by a small number of suspicious individuals within protest crowds and heavily amplified by major London-based Persian-language television channels, are seen as a key factor behind the reluctance of ethnic minorities to enter the protest arena. At the same time, the far right’s attempt to exploit this tactic, by branding a long-standing, freedom-seeking, anti-regime movement with its own agenda, despite the movement’s historical lack of any association with monarchy or far-right politics, is viewed as a major reason for the limited mobilization of the Iranian diaspora in organizing large demonstrations in major cities abroad.

While it remains possible that the government may succeed in forcing bazaar merchants to reopen their shops through a combination of intimidation and incentives, the central issue driving the current unrest remains unresolved: the state’s inability to offer any credible solution to the ongoing economic and livelihood crisis that sparked the protests in the first place. The Islamic Republic’s bankrupt economy, without a substantial injection of funds, is incapable of meeting people’s basic needs in any sphere. Even if the regime manages to temporarily suppress the current wave of protests, the interval before the next uprising is likely to be far shorter than the period that followed the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement of 1401.