Michael Estrin

In The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence historian T.H. Breen wrote, “Only people who had experienced the pleasures and frustrations of so many consumer choices could possibly have come to appreciate how a disruption of that market might be an effective weapon.”

The number one predictor of what makes a boycott effective is how much media attention it creates, not how many people sign onto a petition or how many consumers it mobilizes,” King said in 2017. Ironically, Trump’s inability to shut up likely helped the boycotters by

“Every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great-power rivalry,” Mr. Carney said. “That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”

ran's Currency Tumbles

The rial is weakening rapidly amid tightening sanctions and lower oil prices

86-year-old Mr Khamenei, who has ruled for 36 increasingly despotic years.

This month his government proposed a general stipend worth $7 a month, hoping to buy off public anger. That was met with derision.

Targets could include the IRGC; crucial economic infrastructure, such as the oil terminals on Kharg island in the Gulf; and key officials, perhaps even the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

Yet Mr Trump later suggested that an attack may no longer be necessary: “We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping,” he said.

The ebb in demonstrations does not mean the unrest is over, as Iran’s own history shows. At the start of the Islamic revolution in 1978, protests grew in the spring, dwindled in the summer and roared back in the autumn.