On November 8, a group of local farmers arrived in the city of Esfahan to protest in front of the offices of the official state news agency and the regional water authorities. The protestors called on the government to release water into the Zayendeh River, which has laid dusty and bare for months, a reoccurring phenomenon. Over the next days, the farmers continued their demonstration in the dried-out beds of the river, camping out close to one of downtown Esfahan’s iconic bridges.

While the JCPOA helped reinforce Khamenei's flailing attempt to build a Russia-Iran strategic alliance, the drive by both Tehran and Moscow's dictatorial regimes to cement an anti-U.S. alliance will backfire. Decades of official Islamic Republic hostility to the United States have not eroded and, indeed, likely may have encouraged a general friendliness by the Iranian public toward America. To try to push Russia upon the public will likely accelerate that trend while Moscow's close association with an increasingly unpopular Khamenei and Raisi will reinforce Iranian public hostility toward Russia for decades to come. The nature of dictatorship, however, means that in the short term, such sentiments will not affect policy as both Tehran and Moscow work to erode the post-World War II liberal order and U.S. dominance on the regional and global stage.

Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, has spent his first 100 days in office touring the country in order to meet with communities and to hear their grievances. A steady tempo of protests, including major protests in Esfahan over water shortages, make clear that Raisi faces significant pressure to respond to deep public pessimism about Iran’s economic circumstances. This pessimism and doubts over the ability of the Iranian government to safeguard the welfare of ordinary Iranians overshadowed the Iranian presidential election, which took place in July. Official turnout reported by Iran’s Ministry of Interior was 48 percent, a historic low. A new nationally representative survey fielded by the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland (CISSM), sheds light on public mood in Iran and makes clear the role that economic malaise is playing in strained state-society relations. In CISSM’s September 2021 survey, 53 percent of respondents claimed they “voted on the day of the election,” slightly higher than the official turnout (the difference between the two figures is slightly greater than the survey’s margin of error).

Russia has managed to secure the largest share in Iran’s huge Chalous gas discovery, a move that could have huge economic and geopolitical consequences. A senior Russian official believes this was the final act in securing control over the European energy market.