Analysis: Iran’s clerical leaders will likely struggle with deepening dissent in 2023

Nationwide protests sparked by the death in custody of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini have ushered Iran into a new era of deepening crisis between the clerical leadership and society at large.

Amini’s family said she was beaten after being arrested by the morality police on Sept. 13 for violating the Islamic Republic’s imposed dress code. Amini died three days later. Authorities have blamed the 22-year-old’s death on preexisting medical problems.

Her death unleashed years of…