A little different tone to this year's Iranian uprising

Interesting observations from some of the protestors, as well as expatriate Iranians observing developments from various universities in Europe;

analysts say the protests — which began in the provinces before reaching Tehran — are being driven by working-class Iranians who are expressing an anger that seems sharper than in the last major political uprising in 2009. Demonstrators have chanted, “Death to the dictator,” meaning Iran’s supreme leader, and some have even called for a return to the monarchy that ruled before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought the clerical establishment to power.

“This is a much broader and deeper disavowal of the regime as a whole,” said Ali Ansari, founding director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland.

“If 2009 was a very middle-class rebellion, this is much cruder than that and much angrier than that. This is simpler folk, people who are basically fighting to make a living every day and have very basic demands.”

Iran’s leaders have painted the unrest as a foreign plot. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei broke his silence on the protests Tuesday, saying that “Iran’s enemies, using the various tools at their disposal, including money, weapons, politics, and security apparatus, have allied [with one another] to create problems for the Islamic establishment.”

The speed and geographic spread of the rallies have surprised not only the mullahs but also veterans of Iran’s mainstream political reform movement, forged in the crucible of a disputed 2009 election that many of today’s protesters were too young to have voted in. A Tehran police official said this week that 90% of those arrested in the first five days of rallies were younger than 25.

A 25-year-old working in his father’s grocery shop in Tehran, who asked to be identified only as Saeed, sounded despondent when asked why he was protesting.

“Tell me what my future is,” the high school graduate said in a near-whisper, elbows propped on the counter. “I am a burden on my family. I’m not able to earn enough money. Tell me what else to do.”

The unrest began Thursday in the northeastern city of Mashhad, one of Iran’s most conservative cities. Hard-liners organized a rally against President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate cleric, that quickly expanded into a critique of the entire ruling system.

“It got out of hand because the actual societal discontent cannot be channeled against a particular faction — it is structural,” said Rouzbeh Parsi, an Iran scholar at Lund University in Sweden. “No matter who is running the country, it’s the same crap for people at the bottom.”

The 2009 uprising was centered in Tehran among educated, middle-class and politically engaged Iranians. Dubbed the “Green Movement,” those protests prompted a violent crackdown in which dozens were killed and thousands arrested. Authorities tortured prisoners and held Stalin-style show trials in which defendants were forced to confess they were foreign agents.

The folks comprising the current groundswell have very basic, existential motivations. That can fuel a lot of discontent.
What could tip the scale, turn this into an outright rebellion? It would probably have to entail some element within the Revolutionary Guard, or at least the broader army, willing to use its resources - that is, arms - to abruptly shift loyalties.
We'll probably see in the next few days whether there's more momentum to come or whether this fades.
I am gratified to see overt, vocal support for the groundswell from official US channels.
If actual overthrow is a possibility, 2018 could get real interesting. What would happen to the Houthis in Yemen, Hizbollah in Lebanon?
And, more basically, given the "much cruder, angrier" nature of this year's unrest, what kind of new leadership would shake out from it all?