various cities across Iran<\/a>\u00a0launched a massive nationwide strike on Tuesday May 22, 2018, that is now entered its 5th day.\u00a0 The strike has now spread to more than 168 cities across the country where thousands of truckers joined the strike.<\/p>\nMeanwhile, according to the World Happiness Reports undertaken by relevant international organisations, Iran is one of the unhappiest countries, which according to this year\u2019s statistics (2018) ranks 108 in a total of 155 countries.<\/p>\n
The exacerbation of economic inequality is one of the main causes of the people’s discontent.\u00a0At this point in time, approximately 40% of the villages and 30% of the cities in Iran are below the poverty line. Which makes sense because countries with the highest levels of inequality are proved to have the most economic and social disturbances as well.<\/p>\n
Mosafa Moeen, a professor at Tehran\u2019s University of Medical Sciences stated on the 9th May 2018: \u201cThe statistics indicate that the disparity and injustice in our country is very severe and serious; and as a result, our people are faced with many problems now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to the Fragile State Index of 2014, Iran is among the most fragile countries; in other words, it is one of the most unstable, in terms of social, economic, and political factors; the inequalities between genders are also very significant, and therefore, very dangerous,” he added.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
On the lack of happiness in Iran, Gharaei Moghaddam, a sociologist and professor at Tehran University, emphasized: \u201cTo be very frank, Iran\u2019s people are not happy. We must acknowledge the importance of happiness as the basis of life. Even though the people of India are poor, they are still much happier than our people\u201d.<\/p>\n
He also commented on the direct impact of employment on \u2018social happiness\u2019 and said: \u201cRoughly 3.5 million of our young citizens are unemployed, and as a result, are unable to experience happiness. Besides, \u2018confidence in future\u2019 is another important factor. We have around 9 million young Iranians who are ready to get married, but don\u2019t have a clear picture of what their future will look like…in saying that, how can they possibly be happy?\u201d<\/p>\n
Given such poor circumstances and high inflation, people would of course rather speak out and protest.\u00a0The explosive social consequences of the unacceptable circumstances in Iran are reflected in the recent protests and strikes across the country, which is ultimately indicative of massive changes ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The disturbances of the Iranian economy was once again highlighted during the recent popular protests and uproar in the country. In January 2018, a wave […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":10227,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[433,5,39],"tags":[388,373],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10226"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10226"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10234,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10226\/revisions\/10234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Despite the brutal suppression, the protests continue<\/a> even today. While demonstrators chanted slogans protesting against miserable economic conditions at first, the protests ever since spread to many cities and continued against the totality of Iran regime with people chanting slogans\u00a0such as \u201cReformists, Hardliners, game is over,\u201d rejecting all factions of the regime. They also chanted \u201cDown with Khamenei, Down with Rouhani\u201d indicating their will to end the dictatorship in Iran.<\/p>\n