TEHRAN: Protests over Iran’s soaring cost of living spread to several universities on Tuesday, with students joining shopkeepers and bazaar merchants, semi-official media reported, as the government offered dialogue with demonstrators. Iran’s rial currency has lost nearly half its value against the dollar in 2025, with inflation reaching 42.5 percent in December in a country where unrest has repeatedly flared in recent years and which is facing US sanctions and threats of Israeli strikes.

Iranians are further squeezed every day amid a tanking economy, an energy crisis, water bankruptcy and lethal pollution.

Hundreds of traders and shopkeepers rallied in Saadi Street in central Tehran