![\"Analysis\"](\"https:\/\/static.files.bbci.co.uk\/core\/website\/assets\/static\/news\/incident-types\/light-mode\/analysis.77b314ef10.svg\")
Many people in Iran feel they have little to losepublished at 14:26 GMT<\/p>\nMany people in Iran feel they have little to losepublished at 14:26 GMT<\/p>\n
14:26 GMT<\/p>\n
Jiyar Gol
BBC Persian<\/p>\n
These are certainly the most sustainable and wide-ranging unrest we have seen in many years and that makes it significant.<\/p>\n
What we have seen in Tehran, and the footage we obtained from eyewitnesses before the regime cut off the internet, tell us that in many neighbourhoods people have poured into the streets chanting slogans against Iran’s supreme leader, targeting him directly and holding him responsible for the current conditions in the country.<\/p>\n
Protests erupted last night shortly after exiled Reza Pahlavi, whose father was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, called on Iranians to join the ongoing protests.<\/p>\n
Two days earlier, seven Kurdish political parties in exile and six Kurdish women\u2019s rights groups had called on people in Iran\u2019s Kurdish regions, across four provinces, to stage a general strike. On Thursday, more than 50 cities and towns, large and small, across the Kurdish regions shut down their shops, and many people took to the streets later in the evening.<\/p>\n
In the past, most mass protests were outside of the capital, Tehran, and this time around it is also in Tehran.<\/p>\n
If people in Tehran come out in masses, it will encourage the rest of the country to do the same and this could be a turning point.<\/p>\n
Iranian human rights groups say more than 40 people were killed during protests. BBC Persian has spoken to the family of 21 of them and confirmed their identities.<\/p>\n
US-led sanctions have crippled Iran’s economy. The value of the Iranian currency – the rial – has sharply fallen against the US dollar and this has created an unsustainable situation for many people who are struggling to make ends meet.<\/p>\n
Also, many people are unhappy about social restrictions and there’s deep anger at political unaccountability, including corruption.<\/p>\n
There’s a combination of many different reasons why people are going to the streets and it feels like many of them have little to lose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many people in Iran feel they have little to losepublished at 14:26 GMT 14:26 GMT Jiyar GolBBC Persian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-225284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}