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27 July 2018

Iran’s Restive Middle-Class Poor

by Ray Takeyh

During the last days of 2017, small demonstrations in Iran mushroomed into a nationwide movement, eventually engulfing eighty-five cities. At the time, the protests were thought to have provoked the poor working classes to revolt against economic mismanagement and financial decline. Such a turn of events would have been consequential: these workers were once seen as the last bastion of the Islamic Republic, tied to the regime by the welfare state and a sense of religious piety. The regime’s corruption and its squandering of Iran’s resources on Arab civil wars appeared to have driven away one of its last sectors of support.

A closer look four months later reveals a different aggrieved population triggered the year-end protests, albeit one that still poses a problem for the Islamic Republic. This was a rebellion by what can best be labeled the middle-class poor. The rise of this segment stems from the 1990s, when Iran oversaw a massive expansion of its university system. In one sense, this expansion marked a government success: the delivering of a promise to widen educational opportunities. Yet the supply of graduates has widely outpaced the economy’s employment prospects. Iran’s labor minister, Ali Rabiei, noted in 2014 that more than 2.5 million young Iranians were unemployed; of them, 1.1 million were university graduates. That figure is believed to be even higher now. These individuals are middle class in terms of their education, cultural temperament, and social media footprint. They are poor in the sense that they have not been able to find suitable employment; many live in shantytowns on the periphery of urban centers.

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