Iran’s bazaar merchants, the trader class who were the financial backbone of the ‌1979 ​Islamic Revolution, have turned against the clerics they helped bring to ‌power, fuelling unrest over an economy that has morphed into full-blown anti-government protests.

Frustration among bazaar merchants, from small-scale shopkeepers to large wholesale traders, has ​grown as their political and economic clout in Iran has diminished over the decades while the elite Revolutionary Guards have tightened their grip on the economy, building sprawling and tightly held networks of power.

“We are struggling. We cannot import ‍goods because of U.S. sanctions and because only the ​Guards or those linked to them control the economy. They only think about their own benefits,” said a trader at Tehran’s centuries-old Grand Bazaar, speaking on condition of anonymity.

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