TEHERAN FACES WORST UNREST IN 40 YEARS
180 protesters have been killed as scope of destruction leaks out after an Internet blackout was lifted
IRAN is experiencing its deadliest political unrest since the Islamic Revolution 40 years ago, with at least 180 people killed, possibly hundreds more, as angry protests have been smothered in a government crackdown of unbridled force.
It began two weeks ago with an increase of at least 50 per cent in petrol prices. Within 72 hours, demonstrators in cities large and small called for an end to the Islamic Republic’s government and the downfall of its leaders.
In many places, security forces responded by opening fire on unarmed protesters, largely unemployed or low-income young men.
In Mahshahr city, witnesses and medical personnel said Revolutionary Guard members surrounded, shot and killed 40 to 100 demonstrators, mostly unarmed young men, in a marsh where they had sought refuge.
“The recent use of lethal force against people throughout the country is unprecedented, even for the Islamic Republic and its record of violence,” said Omid Memarian, deputy director at the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based group.
Altogether, between 180 and 450 people, possibly more, were killed in four days of intense violence after the gasoline price increase was announced on Nov 15, with at least 2,000 wounded and 7,000 detained, according to international rights organisations, opposition groups and local journalists.
The last enormous wave of protests in Iran in 2009 after a contested election, which was also met with a deadly crackdown, left 72 people dead over 10 months.
Only now, nearly two weeks after the protests were crushed — and largely obscured by an Internet blackout in the country that was lifted recently — have details on the scope of killings and destruction started to dribble out.
The latest outbursts revealed staggering levels of frustration with Iran’s leaders and underscored the serious economic and political challenges facing them, from the Trump administration’s onerous sanctions on the country to the growing resentment toward Iran by neighbours in an increasingly unstable Middle East.
The gas price increase, announced as most Iranians had gone to bed, came as Iran struggles to fill a yawning budget gap. The Trump administration sanctions, most notably their tight restrictions on exports of Iran’s oil, are a big reason for the shortfall. The sanctions are meant to pressure Iran into renegotiating the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and major world powers, which President Donald Trump abandoned, calling it too weak.
Most of the nationwide unrest seemed concentrated in neighbourhoods and cities populated by low-income and working-class families, suggesting this was an uprising born in the historically loyal power base of Iran’s postrevolutionary hierarchy.
Many Iranians have directed their hostility directly at Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who called the crackdown a justified response to a plot by Iran’s enemies at home and abroad.