The address delivered by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on January 3, 2026, arrives at a moment of acute existential pressure for the Islamic Republic, marking a significant rhetorical pivot in the state’s management of domestic dissent. To understand the gravity of these remarks, one must first locate them within the broader trajectory of Iranian civil unrest. The current wave of protests, which erupted in late December 2025, follows a decade of increasingly frequent and violent social ruptures, ranging from the 2017–2018 economic protests to the Bloody November of 2019 and the profound 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Unlike the 2022 uprising, which was primarily driven by socio-cultural grievances and led by youth and women, the 2026 unrest has resurrected what many analysts call the specter of the stomach. It is rooted in a collapse of purchasing power so severe that it has reached the Bazaaris, the traditional merchant class of the Grand Bazaar who were once the financial backbone of the 1979 Revolution. When the Bazaar closes its doors, as it did in late 2025, it signals a fundamental fracture in the regime’s core social contract with its traditional base.
The causes of these protests are both structural and immediate, forming a triple threat of systemic corruption, the long-term attrition of international sanctions, and a ballooning security budget that many citizens feel comes at the direct expense of their basic needs. The immediate trigger, however, was the unnatural volatility of the Rial. By January 2026, the currency reached historic lows, with exchange rates fluctuating wildly within single trading sessions. For the merchant class, this is not just an inflationary pressure but an operational impossibility. When a trader cannot price goods because the currency loses value between the time of purchase and the time of sale, the legitimate nature of their protest, as acknowledged by Khamenei, becomes an undeniable reality. The Supreme Leader’s recognition of these grievances is a tactical admission; by calling the bazaar class loyal, he is attempting to prevent a total horizontal alignment between the merchants and the more radical university students and labor unions who are calling for systemic regime change.
Khamenei’s insistence on relying on God and the support of the people while refusing to retreat is a direct echo of the foundational political theology of Imam Khomeini. For Khomeini, the Islamic Republic was not merely a state but a divine trust or amanah. He famously argued through the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih that the preservation of the Islamic State was a supreme obligation, even taking precedence over secondary religious tenets. Khamenei’s distinction between legitimate protest and unrest or fitna draws heavily from this Khomeinist framework.
In Khomeini’s view, the people, the mustaz’afin or oppressed, are the legitimate owners of the revolution, provided their demands remain within the Islamic framework. However, the moment a protest adopts anti-Islamic or”anti-Iranian slogans, it is no longer viewed as a grievance of the oppressed but as a tool of the enemies. By framing the exchange rate crisis as a result of enemy actions, Khamenei utilizes the Khomeinist doctrine of the external plot, which suggests that internal failures are often the result of sophisticated foreign sabotage rather than domestic mismanagement.
The core of the speech reveals a strategy of bifurcation: validating the content of the protest while criminalizing its form. By stating that the President and heads of government branches are taking measures, Khamenei deflects systemic responsibility away from his own office and onto the administrative bureaucracy, while simultaneously demanding a firm confrontation with agitators. This creates a dangerous paradox. If the state acknowledges that the price of bread and the value of the Rial are legitimate concerns, but shuts down the avenues of expression for those concerns under the guise of national security, the pressure cooker of Iranian society only tightens. Khamenei’s refusal to retreat is a message of steadfastness to his loyalist base, but to the millions struggling with hyper-inflationary pressures, it may be interpreted as a lack of flexibility. In essence, the January 3rd speech is an attempt to reclaim the narrative of the oppressed for the state. By invoking God, the legacy of the Bazaar, and the mercenary nature of the agitators, the leadership is betting that it can satisfy the merchants with technical currency fixes while using the security apparatus to silence political demands. Whether these measures can actually stabilize a broken economy remains the pivotal question for the stability of the Islamic Republic throughout 2026.
Khamenei, the Bazaar, and Protests
The address delivered by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on January 3, 2026, arrives at a moment of acute existential pressure for the Islamic Republic, marking a significant rhetorical pivot in the state’s management of domestic dissent. To understand the gravity of these remarks, one must first locate them within the broader trajectory of Iranian civil unrest. The current wave of protests, which erupted in late December 2025, follows a decade of increasingly frequent and violent social ruptures, ranging from the 2017–2018 economic protests to the Bloody November of 2019 and the profound 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Unlike the 2022 uprising, which was primarily driven by socio-cultural grievances and led by youth and women, the 2026 unrest has resurrected what many analysts call the specter of the stomach. It is rooted in a collapse of purchasing power so severe that it has reached the Bazaaris, the traditional merchant class of the Grand Bazaar who were once the financial backbone of the 1979 Revolution. When the Bazaar closes its doors, as it did in late 2025, it signals a fundamental fracture in the regime’s core social contract with its traditional base.
The causes of these protests are both structural and immediate, forming a triple threat of systemic corruption, the long-term attrition of international sanctions, and a ballooning security budget that many citizens feel comes at the direct expense of their basic needs. The immediate trigger, however, was the unnatural volatility of the Rial. By January 2026, the currency reached historic lows, with exchange rates fluctuating wildly within single trading sessions. For the merchant class, this is not just an inflationary pressure but an operational impossibility. When a trader cannot price goods because the currency loses value between the time of purchase and the time of sale, the legitimate nature of their protest, as acknowledged by Khamenei, becomes an undeniable reality. The Supreme Leader’s recognition of these grievances is a tactical admission; by calling the bazaar class loyal, he is attempting to prevent a total horizontal alignment between the merchants and the more radical university students and labor unions who are calling for systemic regime change.
Khamenei’s insistence on relying on God and the support of the people while refusing to retreat is a direct echo of the foundational political theology of Imam Khomeini. For Khomeini, the Islamic Republic was not merely a state but a divine trust or amanah. He famously argued through the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih that the preservation of the Islamic State was a supreme obligation, even taking precedence over secondary religious tenets. Khamenei’s distinction between legitimate protest and unrest or fitna draws heavily from this Khomeinist framework.
In Khomeini’s view, the people, the mustaz’afin or oppressed, are the legitimate owners of the revolution, provided their demands remain within the Islamic framework. However, the moment a protest adopts anti-Islamic or”anti-Iranian slogans, it is no longer viewed as a grievance of the oppressed but as a tool of the enemies. By framing the exchange rate crisis as a result of enemy actions, Khamenei utilizes the Khomeinist doctrine of the external plot, which suggests that internal failures are often the result of sophisticated foreign sabotage rather than domestic mismanagement.
The core of the speech reveals a strategy of bifurcation: validating the content of the protest while criminalizing its form. By stating that the President and heads of government branches are taking measures, Khamenei deflects systemic responsibility away from his own office and onto the administrative bureaucracy, while simultaneously demanding a firm confrontation with agitators. This creates a dangerous paradox. If the state acknowledges that the price of bread and the value of the Rial are legitimate concerns, but shuts down the avenues of expression for those concerns under the guise of national security, the pressure cooker of Iranian society only tightens. Khamenei’s refusal to retreat is a message of steadfastness to his loyalist base, but to the millions struggling with hyper-inflationary pressures, it may be interpreted as a lack of flexibility. In essence, the January 3rd speech is an attempt to reclaim the narrative of the oppressed for the state. By invoking God, the legacy of the Bazaar, and the mercenary nature of the agitators, the leadership is betting that it can satisfy the merchants with technical currency fixes while using the security apparatus to silence political demands. Whether these measures can actually stabilize a broken economy remains the pivotal question for the stability of the Islamic Republic throughout 2026.
SAT Commentary
SAT Commentary
SAT Commentaries, a collection of insightful social media threads on current events and social issues, featuring diverse perspectives from various authors.
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