By David P. Goldman: A jump in poultry prices sparked Iran’s protests of the past several days according to media reports. If this is true, the spark landed on long-prepared tinder. Iranian authorities claim that the 40% jump in egg prices in some Iranian cities was a temporary effect of an outbreak of avian flu, although egg prices had already risen by nearly 30% year-on-year as of November. The Iranian rial’s black-market exchange rate declined to 42,000 per dollar from 39,000 per dollar during December, portending a significant but hardly extreme rise in the overall inflation rate, which now stands at around 11%, far below the 35% rate of 2013.
Higher egg prices are an annoyance, but don’t explain the ferocity of the protests. The location of some of the most violent protests, though, is revealing. Radio Farda, an affiliate of America’s Radio Liberty, posted a disturbing smartphone video Jan. 2 showing a mob burning down the police station in the Iranian town of Ghahdarijan, 24km from the ancient city of Isfahan and too small to be found on Google Maps. It seems unlikely that the reach of Western intelligence agencies stretches into this central Iranian hamlet. But the villagers did have a grievance: the river Zayandeh Rud (“life-giver”) which gave rise to Isfahan dried up before reaching the city, the victim of Iran’s mismanagement of its dwindling water resources. Canals to distribute water to the city’s periphery were built by the Savafid dynasty in the 17th century and fostered a green city in the midst of the central Iranian desert.