Iran may not be Venezuela, but the Islamic Republic may at its most vulnerable point in its near 50-year existence as pressure builds from the streets, foreign intelligence services and inside the clerical establishment, analysts told Iran International.

Iran’s foreign minister said on Wednesday that protests roiling the country could be resolved by the country's government and people, calling the unrest an internal matter in an apparent rebuke to US solidarity with demonstrators.

Tehran appears to be placing growing emphasis on its ballistic missile program amid continued domestic unrest and the looming possibility of US intervention in support of protesters in Iran.

An Iranian newspaper reported that security forces blocked blood donations and took wounded protesters from a hospital after opening fire on demonstrations in the western town of Malekshahi, a rare domestic account of alleged abuses that has drawn condemnation from rights groups.

State media in Iran are portraying the country as calm, even as rights groups and videos emerging from streets point to expanding protests and intensifying repression.

Exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi on Tuesday issued his first public call for protests since the latest nationwide uprising began, urging coordinated chanting on Thursday evening, hours after Kurdish opposition parties separately called for a general strike that day.
As Venezuela enters a volatile phase following Nicolas Maduro’s capture by US forces over the weekend, Iran’s strategic investments in the country’s oil refining sector are facing a sudden and uncertain reckoning.

Iran’s rial fell to a fresh record low on Tuesday on unofficial markets, with the US dollar quoted at about 1.47 million rials as authorities seek to defuse public anger over soaring prices.

The fate of the Iranian economy is increasingly shaping debates about the country’s future—one that may prove decisive regardless of how its current political struggles unfold.
Iran’s protest slogans have shifted from reformist appeals in the 2009 Green Movement demonstrations to more prominent calls to reinstate the monarchy ousted in 1979, transcending Tehran's central political divide between moderates and hardliners.
European governments are using disputes over Iran’s alleged role in Ukraine and the nuclear dossier to justify tougher measures against Iran, Russia’s ambassador to Tehran told state media.
A social media post by a prominent Silicon Valley investor has ignited an unusual discussion among global entrepreneurs: what it would take to invest in a future Iran after the fall of the Islamic Republic.

There is a cruel ritual in Iranian opposition politics: some voices abroad constantly interrogate the “purity” of activists inside—why they did not speak more sharply or endorse maximalist slogans, why survival itself looks insufficiently heroic.

The Iran projected on social media these days—brunch parties, rooftop concerts, fashion shows—is real, but only as a tiny fragment of the country’s reality, where most ordinary people struggle to make ends meet.