In the unrest in Iran, the connection to Finland is very missed

The protests that started in Iran after Christmas have escalated to a wider scale than ever during Iran’s Islamist clerical rule. According to international researchers, Iran may be “on the verge of collapse” right now.

President Donald Trump’s the administration threatened to intervene against the Iranian regime if it continued to kill protesters. And reciprocally, the foreign minister of Iran Abbas Araghchi said the country was ready for war if the US or Israel intervened in any way.

The reaction of the oil market to the unclear situation has been markedly calm. Although the oil prices of both Brent and WTI grades have risen by around three dollars per barrel each last Thursday – Brent to $63.3 and WTI to $59 – the rise has been very moderate considering the situation.

The market is now clearly waiting to see what will happen in the populous country of 91.5 million inhabitants. Iran’s theocracy has tried to cut off all online connections to the outside world, but according to unofficial figures reported by human rights groups, at least 500-600 people have already been killed and more than 10,000 arrested in the protests.

The demonstrations were set in motion by Iran’s economic situation, but during January, according to researchers, they have again developed into a broad movement against the Iranian government.

The value of the Iranian rial has collapsed to 1.18 million per one euro. The collapse of the rial has led to the expansion of the economic crisis in Iran. The prices of meat, rice and other basic foods have increased enormously. The country has struggled with annual inflation of about 40 percent.

Anger in Iran has been simmering for years. In more than thirty years, Iran has faced repeated waves of unrest, protests and social and political movements: the 1992 Mashhad riots, the subsequent Islamshahr and Shiraz protests, the 1999 student movement, the 2009 Green Movement, the December 2017-2018 protests, the November 2019 uprising and the 2022 Mahsa shop.

However, there has been no change, but the clerical power of Iran has been able to hold on to power with the help of terror. It has also been an enabler for this in the past Nokian systems. by Nokia Siemens Networks subsidiary Monitoring Systems in 2008, sold to the Iranian state-owned company Irantelecom technology that can intercept mobile phone traffic.

There was a huge uproar about it and eventually the subsidiary was sold to a German company For the basics. Although Monitoring’s control center is certainly not the only system strengthening clerical and authoritarian power in Iran, it has been one of the systems enabling terror and espionage.

This emphasizes, especially in the EU, the need to better assess the use for which technology from Western countries is ultimately ready to be sold. The situation in Iran shows the problems concretely.