The November 2019 protests marked a turning point in Iran's political landscape, widening the divide between the Islamic Republic and much of society.
Authorities sought to deter further demonstrations through mass arrests, lethal force and nationwide internet shutdowns. But the grievances that brought people into the streets persisted, and new sources of discontent accumulated.
The cycle continued through protests in 2021, the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising in 2022 and another nationwide wave in January 2026, which began over economic hardship and faced the deadliest crackdown in recent decades.
November 2019: From fuel prices to mass killings
The November 2019 protests erupted against a backdrop of rising inflation, regional inequality and growing poverty on the outskirts of major cities.
On November 15, authorities announced overnight increases of 200 percent in the price of unsubsidized gasoline and 50 percent for subsidized fuel, without prior public notice.
The decision triggered demonstrations that rapidly expanded beyond opposition to fuel prices into a broader rejection of the political system and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Within 48 to 72 hours, protests had spread to between 100 and 200 cities across 22 to 28 provinces, with major centers in Khuzestan, the outskirts of Tehran, Alborz and several western and central provinces.
Many participants came from what sociologists describe as the impoverished middle class: residents of smaller cities and urban peripheries whose expectations resembled those of the middle class but whose economic circumstances were closer to those of lower-income groups.
The demonstrations lacked established organizations and coordinated leadership, contributing to their rapid, decentralized spread.
The rejection of Iran's political establishment had already emerged during protests in December 2017 and January 2018, when demonstrators chanted that both reformists and conservatives had exhausted their political relevance.
By November 2019, opposition to the Islamic Republic itself was evident from the beginning.
The government, backed by reformist political forces, implemented the fuel price increase and internet shutdown before distancing itself from responsibility for the consequences.
Officials described protesters as "thugs" and characterized the demonstrations as "urban warfare," presenting the crackdown as necessary to protect national security and public order.
Authorities imposed a nationwide shutdown of international internet access under a decision by the country's security council.
Special police units, the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij militia deployed alongside armed personnel using live ammunition. Between 7,000 and 8,600 people were arrested.
In Mahshahr, southern Iran, security forces fired bursts from heavy weapons at protesters and residents who had sought refuge in nearby marshlands.
Reuters subsequently reported, citing sources familiar with the decision-making, that Khamenei had ordered the protests stopped at any cost.
The scale of the killings became a central source of public anger, compounded by the absence of accountability for those responsible.
"Well, shots were fired at their legs too," then-Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said when questioned about why protesters had been shot in the head, according to former lawmaker Mahmoud Sadeghi.
The remarks did not lead to the prosecution of officials who ordered the crackdown. An effort to impeach Rahmani Fazli also failed to advance in parliament.
Mojtaba Zolnouri, then head of parliament's national security committee, defended the minister's actions as implementation of presidential orders and decisions by the country's security authorities.
Estimates of the death toll varied widely. Then-Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli put the figure at between 200 and 225, while Amnesty International documented hundreds of deaths. Reuters, citing Iranian Interior Ministry officials, reported that approximately 1,500 people had been killed.
The wide differences between official and independent estimates of the death toll, coupled with the lack of accountability, helped sustain demands for justice long after the protests had subsided.
How the memory of 2019 shaped the 2022 uprising
The legacy of November 2019 extended beyond the immediate political consequences of the crackdown.
Cultural sociologist Jeffrey Alexander argues that suffering can become a collective trauma when a wider community identifies with the victims through a shared narrative of their suffering and those responsible.
Families seeking justice for those killed in November 2019 helped construct such a narrative.
Annual commemorations, repeated publication of victims' names and accounts shared by grieving mothers on social media transformed the losses of hundreds of families into a wider public concern.
The protest slogan "Aban continues," referring to the Iranian calendar month in which the killings occurred, captured the persistence of that memory.
The anniversary of the crackdown helped determine the timing of protest calls in November 2022, during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.
Families of those killed in 2019 also provided a model for relatives seeking accountability after subsequent crackdowns.
In April 2025, Kamelia Sajadian, whose son Mohammad Hassan Torkaman was killed during the 2022 protests, launched the "I too am someone's mother" campaign.
The initiative drew on words associated with Pouya Bakhtiari, killed in November 2019, and subsequently repeated by his mother, Nahid Shirpisheh. Mothers of victims from both the 2019 and 2022 protests joined the campaign.
But the persistence of protest cannot be explained by collective memory alone.
Economic conditions that helped fuel the 2019 demonstrations deteriorated over the following three years.
Persistent inflation, the declining value of the national currency and shrinking household purchasing power pushed more middle-class Iranians toward poverty and deepened hardship among those already struggling.
The Islamic Republic also consolidated political power following the 2021 presidential election, leaving reformist political forces with little remaining capacity to mediate between the state and society.
At the same time, authorities intensified restrictions on personal freedoms, particularly women's clothing.
A July 2022 decision tightening enforcement of mandatory hijab rules, alongside an expanded presence of morality police patrols, increased pressure on women.
The death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022 after her detention by morality police triggered another nationwide uprising.
Unlike the initial fuel-price protests of 2019, the 2022 movement brought together women, young people, middle-class Iranians, lower-income communities and protesters from different ethnic backgrounds.
Its demands centered on personal freedom, dignity and opposition to compulsory hijab, alongside rejection of the Islamic Republic's political structure.
A younger generation with limited attachment to official ideology or traditional political organizations occupied a central role.
The decentralized character of the demonstrations resembled November 2019, although tactics such as nighttime rooftop chanting also drew on earlier protest movements, including those of 2009.
Repression contains protests but leaves grievances unresolved
The November 2019 crackdown did not end nationwide protest in Iran.
Demonstrations over water shortages in Khuzestan in 2021, the 2022 uprising and the protests of January 2026 demonstrated the continued importance of the streets as a place of confrontation between citizens and the state.
Each wave involved different immediate grievances, but all unfolded against a backdrop of accumulated economic and political dissatisfaction.
Authorities repeatedly used arrests, violence and communications restrictions to contain demonstrations.
Those measures increased the risks of participation and disrupted protesters' ability to organize, without addressing the conditions that had brought them into the streets.
The January 2026 protests followed the same broader trajectory.
Beginning with economic grievances, the demonstrations developed into a wider challenge to the political establishment and were met with the deadliest crackdown in decades.
The recurrence of protest also highlights the limits of interpreting the absence of demonstrations as public acceptance of existing conditions.
Participation depends not only on the depth of dissatisfaction but also on people's assessment of personal risk, their ability to communicate and their expectations about whether others will join them.
Lethal repression raises the perceived cost of taking to the streets, while internet shutdowns make it harder to coordinate gatherings or learn where protests are taking place.
Such measures can temporarily reduce demonstrations even when the underlying grievances remain.
Economic hardship continues to affect access to basic necessities, while restrictions on clothing and personal behavior sustain another source of dissatisfaction.
Authorities have also linked opposition to some of these restrictions with espionage or cooperation with foreign adversaries, extending security enforcement into everyday life.
That approach can increase the consequences of dissent while generating additional resentment over state interference.
The continuing economic strain, restrictions on personal freedoms and reliance on security measures have left the conditions for renewed protest largely intact.
From November 2019 to January 2026, the Islamic Republic has repeatedly demonstrated its capacity to suppress demonstrations, but not to prevent the emergence of new ones.
The central pattern remains unchanged: authorities can regain control of the streets through force, but suppressing a protest movement has not eliminated the grievances that brought it into being.
