The IRGC-IO's campaign of arrests and intimidation against political and institutional rivals, dual nationals, and NGO workers has had a profound chilling effect on Iranian civil society, adding to the disillusionment that many reform-oriented citizens have felt after the harsh repression of the Green Movement in 2009. It is significant that the large-scale protests in December 2017 and November 2019 were focused on poorer suburbs on the outskirts of cities - with very little activity in the wealthier suburbs of northern Tehran -as they were driven primarily by poverty rather than more abstract concerns about civil rights.
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