“Death to high prices”—the slogan was unglamorous, but on 28 December 2017 it lit a fuse in Mashhad that quickly outran its economic frame, mutating into leaderless, nationwide defiance that left at least 50 dead, dozens injured and thousands detained. In the background sat a telling figure: the rial had just cracked the 42,000-per-dollar threshold, a number that quickly became a shorthand for everyday dispossession. Eight years later, on 28 December 2025, the calendar repeated itself: merchants in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar again pulled down their shutters as the rial lurched toward roughly 1.44 million per dollar—about thirty-four times the late-2017 benchmark. By 1 January, 2026, rights groups were reporting the death toll in double digits. The following day, Donald Trump seized the opening, warning that the United States was “locked and loaded” and would “come to their rescue” if Iranian authorities killed more protesters.

Tehran’s reply arrived on cue: senior officials denounced Trump’s message as dangerous “interference,” warned that outside involvement would destabilise the region and repeatedly cast the unrest as something being fuelled from abroad rather than purely home-grown. That reflex is more than posturing; it is a governing habit. By treating disruption as an external plot before it is read as a domestic signal, the system protects its narrative at........

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