Long story short, what is happening is an attempt to do to Iran what was done to Syria. They would love to get regime change in a color revolution format if they could but they realize that is a long shot, so in lieu of that they will settle for just causing as much destabilization and chaos as possible. The protests are heavily astroturfed and fed by regime change agents in the West, they include significant violent elements that attack state security forces and try to cause them to crack down too hard so that they can use that to generate more unrest. Also there are US funded and armed groups operating out of Iraq and Syria that are behind a lot of terrorist attacks in Iran at the moment, hence the anti-terrorist operations that were launched recently.

Syrianization is the model that the imperialists are currently attempting to apply everywhere they can, because they know they are too weak to get full regime change anymore but they hope they can at least cause civil conflict and use that as a pretext to establish themselves and their proxies in at least a part of the territory that they want to keep under their control.

Ukraine will likely end up in a Syria type scenario where the US and US backed proxy regime hold on to a part of the country and continue to use it to wage a hybrid/assymetrical war using terrorist tactics on Russia. But they will not be successful doing this in Iran. Iran’s government is simply too stable, the idea of overthrowing it is very unpopular. Their control over the country is pretty secure.