The Islamic Republic of Iran has been the site of widespread and persistent social unrest for the past several years. This trend has reached a series of crescendos with nationwide uprisings beginning in the final days of 2017, in November 2019, and in September 2022.
Although the spark of each uprising has been distinct from the others, all three are united by similar organizing efforts and defining slogans, many of which express explicit demands for regime change and the establishment of a genuinely democratic system of government. The uprisings also share connections to underlying activist movements which include active labor rights movements operating in several sectors and in defiance of laws banning formal unionization.
Growth of activity in those labor movements may point to the potential for further uprisings, and such growth has been evident in the spring of 2025, while the regime has continued grappling with a number of crises, including the long-term after-effects of the latest nationwide protests.
Transportation Industry Strikes
On or about May 21, truck drivers ceased work in dozens of Iranian cities, with many participants in the strike using their vehicles to block roads and thus intensify disruptions to the national transportation network.
After five days, it was reported that the strike had spread to at least 124 cities across 30 provinces, reflecting both a high degree of organization and shared sensitivity to mounting economic hardships among all lower-level employees in the transportation sector.
The strike comes in response to a number of trends which have allowed the cost of operations to exceed revenues for many drivers. The Union of Truckers and Drivers Association of Iran has cited low freight rates, high insurance premiums, expensive repairs, reductions in fuel quotas, excessive road tolls, and inconsistency of tariffs and other government-imposed costs as contributing to this situation.
Also of concern to truck drivers is a general lack of safety in their industry at a time when a worsening, nationwide economic crisis is contributing to the deterioration of infrastructure and an increase in crime rates among desperately impoverished communities, as well as risky practices and chronic overwork among companies and individual workers aiming to compensate for continuous shortfalls.
But the main issue motivating the recent strikes is reportedly a government plan to restrict diesel subsidies, effectively enacting dramatic price increases, especially for independent and small-scale transport operations. Not only does this underscore the precarity of economic conditions in which many Iranian workers are operating; it also makes the strikes reminiscent of the 2019 uprising, which began in reaction to the announcement of similar price increases for the general public.
Unmet Energy Needs
The pending changes to subsidies may stem from an effort by regime authorities to manipulate demand for fuel among those who rely on access to it for their livelihoods. In this sense, it reflects a broader problem that the Islamic Republic is having in providing for the country’s established energy needs.
That problem is evident from a worsening trend of power outages in cities all across the country. In mid-May, as higher-than-average temperatures spiked demand for home cooling, more than 1,000 households in Tehran were reported to be entirely without power. This has naturally raised concerns about future social unrest among those impacted by the restrictions, especially given that the problem is likely to worsen in coming weeks and months.
In fact, early power outages had already sparked protests in various cities by May 4. This prompted a spokesperson for Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian to appeal for calm just two days later, albeit without providing any meaningful assurances of a government plan to address the problem.
“We deeply regret the power outages… but resolving this issue will take time,” Fatemeh Mohajerani said in the statement.
This would presumably come as little comfort even if the outages were unique to this year. But whereas many Iranians have been forced to accept them as a fact of life in recent years, their early start in this case has fueled speculation that the crisis may become much worse at the height of summer.
This concern is evidently shared by the Industry Commission of the regime’s Chamber of Commerce, which has acknowledged that “in the past three years, investment in power generation, transmission, and distribution has been zero.” This contributed to a shortfall of approximately 3,000 Megawatts in 2023, but the daily newspaper Setareh Sobh reported on May 18 that two years later, the imbalance has grown to ten times that.
On one hand, the lack of investment is a direct consequence of prior shortfalls. On the other hand, it is also sure to cause more of the same. Although the Islamic Republic will undoubtedly have to upgrade its energy infrastructure, the state-run newspaper Donya-e-Eqtesad reported on May 6 that this would require a ten billion dollar upfront investment in electricity production, plus an additional 25 billion for long-term maintenance and upgrades to the transmission network.
Clearly, the regime has no financial means of providing these investments, least of all while it continues to prioritize funding military proxies and defying the international community through continued escalation of nuclear activities far beyond what is needed for civilian power generation.
Meanwhile, public awareness of those misplaced priorities and their consequences contribute to the threat of further protests, potentially on the scale of the 2022 uprising. And in response to that threat, regime authorities seemingly have little to offer other than dishonesty about the country’s economic prospects.
Public Backlash and Regime Suppression
Officially, Iran’s budget still forecasts 8.5 percent growth. It does so not only in spite of recurring power outages and coordinated obstruction of the country’s transportation network, but also in spite of the impact that these trends are having on other areas of the economy.
In mid-May it was reported that half of the country’s concrete production facilities had been forced to close and that the rest were operating at significantly decreased capacity. Approximately one week later, bakers in several Iranian cities went on strike over longstanding issues that have been exacerbated by the power cuts.
The unpredictability of those outages has resulted in countless interruptions to the bread production process, which in turn has led to the loss of entire inventories and the further shrinking of already very thin profit margins.
“Power outages have ruined bakers’ livelihoods,” wrote the daily newspaper Asr-e Iran on May 18. “Bakers are forced to discard souring dough, they are accused of selling flour, and their quotas are cut.”
Three days later, a member of parliament named Ahmad Fatemi publicly wondered why there has been “no accountability” for this worsening situation, which he acknowledged as having “worn out the people” and “devastated production units and industrial owners.”
Bakers in Mashhad, Kerman, Shahin Shahr, Borujerd and elsewhere staged protests on May 24 over the quota reductions, loss of subsidies, skyrocketing cost of ingredients, and so on. But as with the truck drivers, authorities had little to offer in answer to their grievances, and as a predictable result, many of the bakers soon faced violent suppression of their protests.
At the time of this report, those protests were continuing in spite of the violence, but at the same time, authorities appeared to be setting the stage for broader repression of the resurgent labor movement. This was reflected, for instance, in remarks by Javad Nikbin, a member of the Iranian parliament’s budget committee, which described the volume of recent protests as “unnatural” and suggested that they were being guided by the “hidden hand” of the regime’s foreign adversaries.
This is typical of the regime’s propaganda regarding any sufficiently large-scale uprisings, and the same unsubstantiated claims were certainly applied to the recent years’ uprisings as justification for brutal reprisals against them.
Approximately 750 protesters were reportedly killed during the 2022 uprising, and twice that number in November 2019 alone. The earlier statistic is arguably a signifier of how severe the regime’s crackdown could become in the present instance, when truck drivers are protesting for much the same reason as drivers of all kinds did at the time.
For their part, organizers of the recent protests seem to recognize this danger, but remain committed to their activities all the same. Dismissing the regime’s early efforts to deceptively negotiate an end to the protests, the truckers’ union said in its May 25 statement: “Behind the smiles and media promises lie suppression and intimidation. But we drivers will not be fooled by these shows. Not today, not tomorrow.”
The statement also vowed that the protesting drivers would not start their trucks until the regime provides them with a “real guarantee.” And in anticipation of the further rhetoric that state media is sure to deploy against them, it added: “Protest is not a crime, but our legal right. A driver protesting for his bread and dignity is not a rioter.”
