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Protests intensify in Tehran
Thousands of Iranians have returned to the streets to protest against rising prices and the plummeting value of the Iranian Rial.
Yesterday’s unplanned demonstrations at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar came a day after protests forced two major shopping centres for mobile phones and electronics to close in the capital. Protestors also gathered outside the parliament building and clashed with security forces.
Iranian State media didn’t immediately report the Grand Bazaar demonstration. Only the Fars news agency reported a protest in Parliament, which it described only as an incident in which shopkeepers asked lawmakers to “stop rising prices”.
Videos posted on social media showed protestors chanting “death to Palestine,” “help us, not Gaza,” and “leave Syria alone and deal with Iran,” an expression of discontent with the Iranian regime spending billions of dollars on military operations in Syria and grants to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza as the country faces an economic crisis.
Iran Freedom, a popular Twitter account dedicated to bringing freedom and democracy to Iran, wrote that the protesters asked security forces to join the protests instead of breaking them up. “Disciplinary forces dispatch to crackdown the protests; in return protesters chant “Disciplinary force, support us, support us”.
Reuters quoted traders in Tehran’s bazaar saying: “We are all angry with the economic situation. We cannot continue our businesses like this. But we are not against the regime.”
Tehran’s Deputy Governor, Abdolazim Rezaie, played down the significance of the protests, saying that no one had been arrested, adding that all the shops will be open on Tuesday. These were the first large scale demonstrations since December 2017 when protests erupted calling on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to step down and were violently contained by Iranian security forces.
The Iranian rial sank as low as 90,000 to the dollar in the unofficial market on Monday as the country faces renewed US sanctions. At the end of last year, it stood at 42,890.