Working-class anger in Iran shows government’s vulnerability

The working-class anger behind a week of unrest in Iran will pose an increasingly potent challenge to Tehran’s ruling clerics as economic and social pressures mount, even if the current protests peter out, analysts said Wednesday.

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“The rebuke both from the urban poor and more religious cities in Iran should be a wake-up call” to the Iranian leadership, said Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.

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“They are average Iranians, and they are tired of the regime’s attempts to either humble or ignore them,” Taleblu said. “Elites should be worried that they have a diminishing social base for legitimacy.”

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