This is Jacobin Radio. I'm Susie Wiseman.

Over the past several weeks, Iran has been gripped by the largest wave of protests since the women Life Freedom Uprising of 2022.

What began as an economic protest against a collapsing currency, runaway inflation, and deepening inequality, has once again turned political with chance calling for the end

of the Islamic Republic itself.

The Iranian state has responded, as it has before, with repression, mass arrests, killings, and

sweeping internet blackouts. At the same time, Western governments and media outlets have

rushed to frame the uprising through familiar and misleading narratives, searching for a leader,

amplifying exile monarchists, and openly threatening military intervention.

Iranian protesters today are caught between multiple dangers, a brutal theocratic dictatorship at home,

the attempt to resurrect an authoritarian monarchy from abroad, and the threat of U.S. and Israeli

intervention that would almost certainly derail,

not advance, popular struggle. To understand what's actually happening, we need to look beneath

the headlines at the political economy driving the unrest, the class forces involved,

the limits of the opposition, and the stakes for Iran, and I should say Europe and the world.

Today I'm beneath the surface. I'm joined

by sociologist Kevin Harris, whose work focuses on Iran's political economy and class structure.

And in the second half, I'll be joined by Yasim and Mather, longtime socialist writer and an

analyst of Iranian politics who's been closely tracking the protests, the repression, and the

dangerous distortions

shaping Western coverage. All this, when our program returns in just a moment.

Welcome back to the show.

I'm Susie Wiseman, and my first guest is with us, Kevin Harris, Associate Professor of Sociology at UCLA, and the author of a Social Revolution, Politics and the Welfare State in Iran.

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