The Iranian government yesterday warned people against further protests after two days of demonstrations sparked by anger over an array of economic problems.
“We urge all those who receive these calls to protest not to participate in these illegal gatherings, as they will create problems for themselves and other citizens,” Iranian Minister of the Interior Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said.
State broadcaster Islamic Republic of Iran News Network said it had been banned from covering the protests that on Thursday spread from Iran’s second city, Mashhad, to other areas.
Photo: AP
The protests initially targeted economic problems, but quickly turned against the Muslim regime as a whole.
US President Donald Trump said “the world is watching” after dozens of demonstrators were arrested.
Media coverage inside Iran focused almost exclusively on pro-regime rallies held yesterday to mark the defeat of the last major protest movement in 2009.
The timing was coincidental, as the rallies are held every year on Dec. 30, but offered a handy show of strength to the regime as huge crowds of black-clad supporters gathered across the country.
“The enemy wants once again to create a new plot and use social media and economic issues to foment a new sedition,” Ayatollah Mohsen Araki told a crowd in Tehran, the conservative Fars news agency reported.
Video footage on social media showed hundreds marching through the holy city of Qom on Friday evening, with people chanting “Death to the dictator” and “Free political prisoners.”
There were even chants in favor of the monarchy toppled by the 1979 Islamic revolution, while others criticized the regime over its support of the Palestinians and other regional movements rather than focusing on problems at home.
Footage showed thousands gathered in cities including Rasht, Hamadan, Kermanshah and Qazvin, with police responding with water cannons.
Officials were quick to blame outside forces for the unrest.
“Although people have a right to protest, protesters must know how they are being directed,” Iranian Vice President for Women and Family Affairs Masoumeh Ebtekar said on Twitter.
Since the 2009 protests were ruthlessly put down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, many middle-class Iranians have abandoned hope of pressing for change from the streets.
However, low-level strikes and demonstrations have continued, often on a sector-by-sector basis, as bus drivers, teachers or workers from specific factories protest against unpaid wages or poor conditions.
Some of this week’s protests were directed against financial scandals linked to unauthorized lending institutions that collapsed with the loss of hundreds of thousands of accounts.
Payam Parhiz, editor-in-chief of reformist Nazar media network that broke the news of the Mashhad protests, said they were more focused on the economy than those in 2009, which were sparked by allegations of election-rigging.
“Then, they were middle-class and their slogans went beyond economic matters to things like cultural liberties,” he told reporters. “Today, the concerns are economic. There are people who have lost their life savings. They will protest until their problems are resolved.”
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS