How Iran's tinderbox economy created a raging protest movement

When your entire economy rests on the price of oil, things are bound to go up in flames

Protests in Tehran.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Iran is in a state of upheaval. Thousands of Iranian protesters have poured into the streets over the last week. Hundreds have been arrested and several have been killed. These are the largest protests to hit the country since the unrest that followed the 2009 presidential elections, and they seem to be driven largely by anger over unemployment and wages.

Iran's economy has been something of a mess for decades. Like a lot of autocratic regimes that find themselves sitting atop abundant natural resources, Iran's economy is dominated by oil and gas. The industry is largely state-run (along with large swaths of the rest of the economy), it provides the bulk of the country's exports, and those exports pay for half to 80 percent of all government spending. As a result, much of Iran's employment, pay, and welfare support is basically oil revenue funneled through the government to the rest of the population.

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.