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News out of Iran has been difficult to get and harder to assess.

Over the turn of the year, protests about economic conditions turned into what began to look like an unarmed revolution

aimed at theocratic regime itself. The problem for Iran watches was to decide whether this revolt

will go the way of others and be successfully repressed by state violence or whether it was a harbinger

of the end of the reign of the mullahs.

So which is it?

Step into the briefing room and together we'll find out.

First, I'm joined by the BBC Persian Services Special Correspondent, Kazranaji.

Kasranaji, can you remind us how this bait of protest began?

It started unexpectedly at the end of December, on the 28th of December.

And it started with shopkeepers and the merchants in Tehran's Bazaar, which is the traditional center of trade in Iran and the

pillar of support for the regime in Iran.

It started there, and it started with shopkeepers shutting their shops and businesses closing,

claiming that they cannot do business anymore with the constantly falling value of the Iranian

Real, which was basically protesting the collapse of the economy that has been sort of going

down and down and down for a very long time for mismanagement and also because of the international

sanctions that Iran is under.

And then it gradually over the next few days and two weeks sort of spread to many other parts of Tehran, the capital, but other cities.

So it got out of hand. It got out of hand in the sense that, okay, the initial reason

for this was economics, but the deep sort of discontent in Iran with the regime, with Iran's

supreme leader and the way the country is being managed, the policies of the Supreme Leader that has led to this

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