TIP—Analysts through the weekend and into Monday continued to trace signs that – per a headline published at the top of one Agence France-Presse (AFP) story – Rouhani’s “honeymoon” with the Iranian public was over amid evidence that he was either unable or unwilling to implement promised social reforms and economic improvements. AFP had last week reported on what the wire described as Rouhani’s “first major political defeat,” after 95 percent of Iranians chose to accept government hand-outs that his government had urged they forgo.

The second AFP story, published on Sunday, assessed that “the public’s goodwill towards [Rouhani] is showing the first signs of fading” due to stalled economic progress. Meanwhile the Jerusalem Post reported on the fallout from reports—which had recently been revealed by the Wall Street Journal—that there had recently been a mass beating of imprisoned Iranian dissidents incarcerated in the country’s Evin prison.

The Post described a growing movement to show solidarity with the political prisoners, dozens of whom had been sent to the hospital by the beatings, with “Iranian men and women posted pictures on social media of themselves with shaved head,” a gesture developed after the publication of “a photograph of human rights lawyer Abdolfatah Soltani [who had been beaten in the raid] that showed him last week with a shaved head.”

The outlet also contextualized the developments against broader trends in the Islamic republic, suggesting that “with 25 percent of the Islamic Republic’s population unemployed or underemployed, the ingredients are present for mushrooming social unrest.” Reports published on Saturday indicated that Iranian officials had officially banned the reformist newspaper Ebtekar, the third such move in recent months.