Shah caller: Iran’s protests are different this time
Episode
27 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Productivity, Health & Wellness, Investing
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Economic Crisis Drivers: Iran's rial lost 50% value in one year, trading at 1,500,000 per dollar with 40% general inflation and 70% food inflation. President's response offers citizens 10,000,000 rials monthly (worth $7-8), barely covering basic staples while triggering more price increases.
- ✓Regime Vulnerability: Unlike 2022 protests where Iran made tactical concessions on headscarf enforcement, current economic grievances have no quick fixes. Internal regime debates now discuss removing Supreme Leader Khamenei to preserve the system, similar to Venezuela's Maduro situation, showing unprecedented fragility.
- ✓China's Anaconda Strategy: PLA escalates pressure on Taiwan through weather balloons, drone surveillance, aircraft carrier circumnavigation, and suspected undersea cable cutting (11 incidents since 2023). This gray zone warfare aims to demoralize Taiwan without triggering full military response from allies.
- ✓2027 Military Timeline: China's PLA targets 2027 for comprehensive modernization focused on intelligentized warfare (AI, information networks, data systems). This centennial of PLA's founding enables pivot from exercises to real blockade operations in significantly reduced timeframes compared to previous years.
What It Covers
Iran faces its largest protests since 2022, driven by economic collapse and jobless young men rather than social issues, while China escalates military pressure around Taiwan through gray zone tactics ahead of 2027.
Key Questions Answered
- •Economic Crisis Drivers: Iran's rial lost 50% value in one year, trading at 1,500,000 per dollar with 40% general inflation and 70% food inflation. President's response offers citizens 10,000,000 rials monthly (worth $7-8), barely covering basic staples while triggering more price increases.
- •Regime Vulnerability: Unlike 2022 protests where Iran made tactical concessions on headscarf enforcement, current economic grievances have no quick fixes. Internal regime debates now discuss removing Supreme Leader Khamenei to preserve the system, similar to Venezuela's Maduro situation, showing unprecedented fragility.
- •China's Anaconda Strategy: PLA escalates pressure on Taiwan through weather balloons, drone surveillance, aircraft carrier circumnavigation, and suspected undersea cable cutting (11 incidents since 2023). This gray zone warfare aims to demoralize Taiwan without triggering full military response from allies.
- •2027 Military Timeline: China's PLA targets 2027 for comprehensive modernization focused on intelligentized warfare (AI, information networks, data systems). This centennial of PLA's founding enables pivot from exercises to real blockade operations in significantly reduced timeframes compared to previous years.
Notable Moment
A former MIT plasma physics professor pursuing fusion energy was murdered by his old classmate from Portuguese secondary school, who had been the top student but later disappeared before committing multiple shootings across universities.
Episode Transcript
Are you trying to seize the value from AI? Schneider Electric electrifies, automates, and digitalizes every industry, business, and home, driving efficiency and sustainability for all. Listen to their AI at Scale podcast to hear from AI experts and to get the answers and practical examples of AI for energy and industry. Search AI at Scale podcast by Schneider Electric today. You know how everything's a subscription now? Music, movies, even socks. I swear of it. To continue this ad, please upgrade to premium plus platinum. What? No. Anyway, Blue Apron This is a paperless ad. Please confirm your billing. Oh, that's annoying. At least with the new Blue Apron, there's no subscription needed. Get delicious meals delivered without the weekly plan. Wait. No subscription? Keep the flavor. Ditch the subscription. Get 20% off your first two orders with code apron 20. Terms and conditions apply. Visit blue apron dot com slash terms for more. The Economist. Hello, and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor. And I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Tensions between China and its near neighbors are a perennial concern. As part of our World Ahead series, our correspondent explains what we might expect to see in the country's behavior this year towards Taiwan, Japan, and beyond. And Nino Lureu spent a career studying plasma, that mysterious fourth phase of matter, hoping to harness it for clean fusion energy. Our obituaries editor recounts how that effort was cut short by a long ago classmate. First up, though. The unrest in Iran started on December 28 when electronics vendors in Tehran went on strike to protest a currency that was in free fall. And last night, those protests grew in size significantly. Greg Carlstrom is a Middle East correspondent for The Economist. Despite a countrywide Internet shutdown, videos have emerged of huge crowds on the streets, not only in Tehran, but in cities across the country. Protesters chanted things like death to the Ayatollah and long live the Shah, referring to the deposed monarch of Iran. There were videos of protesters setting fires in city centers, attempting to break into government buildings in provincial cities. These are not the biggest protests we've seen in Iran, but they do seem like the largest ones since 2022. And they come at a moment when the Iranian regime looks more fragile than ever. We have spent quite some time on the show, Greg, talking about protests in Iran and the degree to which they may or may not change the facts on the ground. How are these different from the ones, you know, in particular, the twenty twenty two riots that you mentioned? I think they're different not only in size, but in the nature of the protests. Those demonstrations in 2022, they began after a young woman was arrested for failing to observe the state mandated dress code and subsequently died in police custody. And so …
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