Iran’s judiciary says that about 465 people are still being detained across the country for taking part in a wave of antigovernment protests that began nearly three weeks earlier.

Judiciary spokesman Gholamhosein Mohseni-Ejei also acknowledged that 25 people were killed in violence surrounding the protests that began on December 28.

Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said 440 “arrested rioters” had been released from detention facilities in Tehran alone in recent days.

Mohseni-Ejei said there were still 55 people being held in the Iranian capital.

He also said that 25 “ordinary citizens and our own forces were killed during the recent troubles,” and claimed that none were killed by gunfire from security forces because “they were ordered not to use their weapons.”

Officials had previously said 21 people were killed.

Mohseni-Ejei did not provide details on how the members of the security forces or civilians were killed, including six protesters who died while trying to storm a police station in the central province of Isfahan.

An Iranian reformist lawmaker, Mahmud Sadeghi, said last week that about 3,700 people had been arrested across the country during the weeks of protests, which were sparked by anger about Iran’s troubled economy and official corruption but escalated rapidly with some calling for the overthrow of the country’s clerical rulers.

The biggest unrest to strike the country in almost a decade began less than a week ago and has spread rapidly

How did the protests start?

A relatively small protest on 28 December, in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city, began a wave of seemingly spontaneous demonstrations that have spread across the country. Officials close to the moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, have blamed supporters of his rival, hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi, who has his base in the city, for starting the protests. Initial chants of “death to Rouhani” soon gave way to harsher slogans targeting the foundations of the Islamic republic, such as “death to the dictator”, in reference to the country’s Raisi-allied supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

https://twitter.com/halatoon/status/948523987868487680

Iran’s enemies to blame for unrest, says supreme leader, as death toll rises

Who is protesting?

The protests, stronger in the provinces than Tehran, appear dominated by members of the working class under-25s who have suffered the most under Iran’s sluggish economy.

Observers say the partial lifting of sanctions that followed Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with the west delivered uneven economic benefits to the country. “Middle class fortunes have improved somewhat following the nuclear deal … On the contrary, members of the working class … [have been] very vulnerable,” said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, the founder of the Europe-Iran business forum.

 

What are they calling for and who do they blame?

While the protests may have begun over economic grievances, they soon took on a political dimension. Chants have both called on Khamenei to step down and voiced opposition to Iran’s regional policy, including “Let go of Syria, think about us” and “I give my life for Iran, not Gaza, not Lebanon”. Videos posted on social networks show some protesters chanting nostalgic slogans in support of the deposed monarchy and late shah.

The tone of the slogans has troubled many reformists, who are critical of hardliners in the Iranian establishment but do not urge the overthrow of the Islamic republic. Another contributing factor could be that although Rouhani was re-elected in a landslide victory last year, with nearly 25m votes, he then took a conservative path and failed to deliver on promises to change the country.

How bad is the economy?

Inflation is at 12% – albeit down from 40% at the start of Rouhani’s first term in 2013 – and unemployment is high. Youth unemployment is about 40%, more than 3 million Iranians are jobless and the prices of some basic food items, such as poultry and eggs, have recently soared by almost half. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, this is “despite the promise of Hassan Rouhani that the 2015 nuclear deal would help to create jobs and improve people’s living standards”.

How do the protests compare to what happened in 2009?

The protests are the biggest challenge to Tehran’s leaders since 2009, when the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad led to months of unrest amid a bloody crackdown. The protests are bigger in the provinces than in 2009, of a scale rarely seen since the 1979 Islamic revolution, but in Tehran they are so far smaller than the mostly middle class protests of 2009.

Most chants during 2009 featured slogans in support of the opposition leaders under house arrest, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, but in the recent protests their names are seldom heard.

What do the protests mean for Iran’s reformists?

Reformists, silenced and relatively marginalised for over a decade by hardliners, are puzzled how to react. Most senior figures within the reformist camp have remained mute, troubled by calls for regime change, while a number of reformist commentators have come out asking the ruling system to allow peaceful demonstrations but expressing concerns that the recent protests are becoming too radical. Ironically, the ruling establishment now would need the help of the reformists to contain the growing unrest – but some have been sidelined and others, particularly the younger ones, discouraged by a lack of political reform under Rouhani.

How has the state handled the protests so far?

In the early days of the protests, the authorities largely held back but as the unrest continued and an intervention from Rouhani failed to calm public anger, security forces have taken on a harsher line. According to latest official figures, at least 21 people have died, including a number of security guards, and since Saturday, at least 450 people have been arrested in Tehran alone. Hundreds more have been arrested in provinces.

Protesters say they have been hit by teargas but in sharp contrast to their handling of previous unrest, authorities have allowed local media to report on the protests, although many still reflect the official line. A limited number of foreign media still operating in Iran are also allowed to
report.

What could happen next? 

It is too soon to say if the protests will continue or peter out as the authorities step up their crackdown. In 2009, months of bloody crackdown ultimately prevailed. As the protesters do not have a leader, many say they lack strategy. Others say Rouhani may capitalise on the unrest and urge the hardliners to open up the political atmosphere, while pessimist reformers think the hardliners have now found a pretext to undermine Rouhani and the moderates, consolidating their power before any vacancy opens for the next supreme leader.

Are foreign powers meddling?

Iranian authorities have been quick to blame the unrest on foreign powers, accusing Saudi Arabia of direct involvement and claiming Donald Trump’s tweets, which have welcomed the protests, as evidence of enemy involvement. But there is little evidence so far to show that the unrest is being driven from outside, even though Washington and Riyadh have not been shy to say explicitly that they favour regime change and have been doing all at their disposal to purse it. Exiled groups, such as the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran, which is not popular inside Iran, and monarchists, have seized upon the moment and welcomed the protests. One of Iran’s most outspoken MPs, Mahmoud Sadeghi, however, said he had urged the interior ministry not to link protests with foreign powers and instead improve the economic situation, open up state television to diverse opinions and lift restrictions.

 

Overnight clashes between protesters and security forces killed another nine people in Iran, AP reported quoting Iranian state television.

State TV reported that six people were killed during an attack on a police station in the town of Qahdarijan.  State TV also said an 11-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man were killed in the town of Khomeinishahr, while a member of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard was killed in the town of Najafabad.

Demonstrations in a number of Iranian cities have taken an unexpected turn. Initially instigated by the clerics, they’ve been taken over by secular forces predominantly opposed to the mullahs’ regime.

Be careful, Iranian Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri had said. Anyone who stirs up political protest runs the risk of losing control of it. He made clear that this also applied to those who encouraged the demonstrations that began towards the end of last week. “The people behind events like these will get their fingers burned,” he said. “They think they are targeting the government with their actions.” But in fact, Jahangiri seemed to imply, they were primarily damaging themselves.

Clearly, he was right. Many observers noted that the protests didn’t start just anywhere, but in the city of Mashhad in the north-east of the country, near the border with Turkmenistan. The metropolis of 3 million people, one of the seven sacred sites of Shiite Islam, is the hometown of the conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi. He was Hassan Rouhani’s main — defeated — rival in the presidential election of May 2017.

Raisi’s father-in-law, the radical cleric Ahmad Alamolhoda, also lives in Mashhad. Recently, Alamolhoda protested against the decision to allow concerts to take place in Iran again. The current, ongoing protests kicked off the day after the Tehran police chief announced that women contravening the regulations on the wearing of the veil would no longer be arrested, but would have to attend educational classes instead.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has appealed for calm but also warned that violence won’t be tolerated. Protests began last week over rising prices but quickly morphed into anti-government demonstrations.

Iranian officials were expected to hold an emergency meeting Monday to discuss a burgeoning security crisis after 10 people were killed overnight as nationwide demonstrations continued.

The overall death toll is currently 12, and hundreds more have been arrested.

Of those who died, six people were killed in the small western town of Tuyserkan and at least two more people were shot dead in the southwestern town of Izeh, according to local TV reports.

“In this incident (in Tuyserkan), there were shots fired in which three people died and three other people were killed in subsequent events,” a news presenter on state television said without elaborating.

While showing video footage of the damage caused by the protests, the state TV also reported, “In the events of last night, unfortunately, a total of about 10 people were killed in several cities.” It gave no further details of the deaths.