The protests largely began over economic problems but as more people joined the demonstrations, the reasons for the uprising swelled to encompass the Regime’s human rights abuses, corruption, lack of democracy, isolationism, support for terrorism, and regional warfare.
Let’s examine some of those reasons in a bit more detail.

Human Rights Abuses

Human rights under the Iranian Regime and few and far between. Women, religious and ethnic minorities, political opponents, journalists, and human rights advocates are continually suppressed and harassed by the state security forces.

Worse still for the current protesters, the Regime has a bloody history of violent suppression of its people in times of crisis for the mullahs.

In 1988, at the tail end of the Iran-Iraq war, the Regime was feeling unstable and wanted to quell the people’s dissent, so they slaughtered 30,000 political prisoners, mainly members of the Iranian Resistance group, The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK).

o far in the 2017-8 protests, the Regime has killed at least 50 people in the streets, while 8,000 have been arrested and threatened with the death penalty. Some of the detainees are even being tortured to death.

Lack of Democracy

The Iranian Regime paints a picture of a democratic country, but nothing could be further from the truth. They routinely bar political opponents from running for office, have an unelected head of state who has unchecked authority over state matters, and fix elections in favour of their chosen candidate.

Isolationism

The Iranian youth are seeking an open society that works with the rest of the world, so the Regime censors the internet (and any other communication method that they can) in order to hide their citizens from modern civilization, in much the same way as North Korea has done.

Regional Warfare

There should be no mistake about it. The Iranian Regime squanders its nation’s wealth to interfere in the affairs of other nations in the Middle East, including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, through proxy groups that destabilise the country until Iran can sweep in, act as the stabilising force, and take control.

Fahd bin Rashed Al-Abdulkareem, the Editor-in-Chief of Al-Riyadh Newspaper, wrote on Riyadh Daily, that this uprising would haunt the Regime and bring its downfall.
This cannot happen soon enough.