Iran is the second largest Country in the Middle East. It also has large reserves of fossil fuels – which include the world's largest natural gas supply and the fourth-largest proven oil reserves.

Iran is a major political and religious player in the area and it is normal that when a huge wave of protests affects the whole country like it happened in the last days, all the international attention is focused on understanding what is going on.


The famous picture of the girl who is protesting without dressing her hijab

The problem is that it is really difficult to understand this country full of contradictions and overall, with a huge control on the media from the State.

What I understood is that the protests have been pushed by the conservatives against the President Rohuani, but it has been quickly developed in a much wider protest against the corruption and the economic stagnation of the country.

What is interesting in those demonstrations is that they were not led by any political party but built up via social media. The protests involved also small cities, where people are not claiming for more freedom, but for more work and against the increase of the prices.

Even if it seems the central Government has been able to repress the demonstrations, it doesn't mean that the problems at the oring of it will disappear. We will see in the next months if those tensions will bring some important changes in Iran.

For further reference  I would suggest this article from Il Post (in Italian) and another from BBC very interesting as well.