Iran’s revolution may well come by way of imperious necessity, and not, as experts have long posited, out of a yearning for democratic change.
And though this isn’t to say that Iranians don’t long for their freedom—they most certainly do—it remains true that a lack of leadership on the part of the opposition has made it difficult for people to find cohesion in their political struggle. For all their many calls for change, Iran’s various opposition parties have failed to capture the hearts and minds of their compatriots by offering a vision worth braving the regime’s infamous security apparatus.
But if prudence thus far has compelled millions to keep their dissidence under wraps, hunger may prove too compelling a motivation for Iranians to ignore, and as it were, a cry the regime forces will unlikely be able to reason with, let alone contain.
Though intellectuals have often romanticized the ascent of the French Republic by arguing that France thought to reinvent itself free of the diktat of the monarchy and the church, to become a child of the revolution and the Enlightenment, it was rampant inflation and mounting hunger that compelled peasants to brandish their forks against the king.
The people cried first and foremost for food—regime change was but a by-product of popular anger, a tool ideologues used to carve out their political narrative.
A more recent example was offered to us in Tunisia in 2011, when the act of a desperate street vendor unleashed a roar of such magnitude that Arab leaders suddenly found themselves on uneven ground, their authority challenged without much hope of political redemption.
Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old fruit seller whose self-immolation triggered revolutions across the Middle East, acted not out of ideology, but economic desperation. As the martyr of a system that preys on the weak, his pain became both a catalyst and a symbol—the very elements that make a grand revolution.
Bread of late has become central to Iran’s public discourse. And though the regime’s men have worked hard to rid their skies of the clouds of dissent, wielding both repression and indoctrination to engineer consent, hunger may be the one storm they won’t be able to weather.
Exhausted by decades of sanctions, the Islamic Republic’s economy is particularly exposed to market fluctuations. And if experts’ warnings are to be taken seriously, the coup de grace could soon come by way of a global food shortage, an insult to its socio-economic ecosystem that would prove impossible to absorb. The regime’s survival remains tied to its ability to negotiate a way out of financial strangulation, less so its willingness to reform, hence its officials’ determination to strike a deal with the West—although interestingly enough, not at the cost of their nuclear ambitions.
“Food shortages work in two ways. One is you have the tragedy of people actually starving to death. But second is you have the fact that often much larger numbers of people are poorly nourished, and that makes them more vulnerable to existing diseases,” Sands told Reuters in a June interview.
Sands is not alone in his assessment, insofar as trouble is indeed brewing among communities.
In April, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) rang the alarm, noting that a mix of high inflation and supply problems will put vulnerable economies under a great deal of stress and thus exacerbate poverty.
“Even before the war [in Ukraine], inflation in many countries had been rising due to supply-demand imbalances and policy support during the pandemic, prompting a tightening of monetary policy. ... In this context, beyond its immediate and tragic humanitarian impact, the war will slow economic growth and increase inflation. ... Furthermore, increases in food and fuel prices may also significantly increase the prospect of social unrest in poorer countries.”
Iran’s summer of discontent has only just begun; what comes next could potentially lead to a complete regional shake-up.
