2023 could be the year when the people of Iran finally break free

Editorial: With each protest, with every act of symbolic resistance, with each secret channel of communication opened up, the regime comes closer to eventual collapse

The protests, large and small, continue to spread, and the attempts to suppress them grow ever more desperate and ineffective (Reuters)

Could 2023 be the year of a new Iranian revolution? It almost seems too much to hope for, and too fantastical, given the iron grip the ayatollahs have exerted over the people since they came to power in 1979, supplanting the Shah.

“Civilian” presidents come and go, but the supreme leaders – Ayatollah Khomeini and, for the past three decades, Ali Khamenei – have kept a watchful and often cruel eye over the nation ever since, sponsoring terror and conducting proxy wars such as the conflict with Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

Oil-rich Iran should be wealthy, but it suffers from both fuel shortages and international sanctions. So friendless is the regime that it has taken to selling lethal drones to Vladimir Putin. The country has never been so ostracised and isolated, and its young population are growing tired of it and its misogyny. Times are changing.