Why is Iran’s economy failing, prompting deadly protests?

Four weeks after shopkeepers in Tehran’s grand bazaar shut their stores in protest over the tanking economy, much of Iran is under an internet blackout as protests, which swelled to mass demonstrations against Iran’s clerical rule, have quietened. The hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets in the wake of the shopkeepers’ protest are now reported to be staying at home following the deaths and detention of many protesters. Iran’s government has not released an official death toll, and estimates about how many people have died in the protests vary. But the widely-cited US-based Human Rights Activists…