Inequality plagues Iran’s Mashhad, starting point of protests 1/23/2018 10:13:00 PM Iranians in Britain demonstrations against government in solidarity with the protests of the Iranian people The Baghdad Post, January 23 2018  - The wave of anti-government protests in Iran at the end of December began in one of the country’s conservative strongholds: its second city, Mashhad. The site of the huge Imam Reza shrine that draws more than 20 million Shia pilgrims a year, the city’s population has ballooned to around 3 million in recent years. Rampant development has emphasized a widening social gap in Mashhad, the starting point of last year’s anti-government protests, according to a report published in The Guardian. After a proposed modernization of the area around the shrine complex by architect Dariush Borbor was abandoned following the Iranian revolution, rampant development in the last two decades may have helped aggravate social forces hitting the stree...