Bolder protests are being recorded across Iran amid an increasing deployment of armed security officers as the government’s efforts to contain an unravelling economic situation fall flat.
Footage circulating online showed huge protests on Tuesday night in the city of Abdanan, in the central province of Ilam, where several major demonstrations have taken place over the past week.
Thousands of people, from children accompanied by parents to the elderly, were filmed walking and chanting in the streets of the small city while helicopters flew overhead. The protesters appeared to have vastly outnumbered the security personnel deployed to contain them.
In the city of Ilam, the province’s capital, videos showed security forces storming the Imam Khomeini Hospital to root out and arrest protesters, something rights group Amnesty International said violates international law and again shows “how far the Iranian authorities are willing to go to crush dissent”.
The hospital became a target after protests in the county of Malekshahi earlier this week, where multiple demonstrators were shot dead while gathering at the entrance of a military base. Some wounded protesters were taken to the hospital.
Several graphic videos from the scene of the shooting circulating online showed people being sprayed with live fire and falling to the ground as they fled from the gate. The local governor said the shooting is under investigation.
State-linked media confirmed that at least three people were killed. They also announced on Tuesday that a police officer was shot dead after armed clashes took place in the aftermath of funeral processions for the dead protesters.
In Tehran, numerous videos showed traders and business owners at the Grand Bazaar, who closed down their shops, clashing with security forces in riot gear with batons and using tear gas.
People could be heard chanting “freedom” in the bazaar and shouting “dishonourable” at police officers. “Execute me if you want, I’m not a rioter,” one man shouted when pressured by security forces, to cheers and clapping from the crowd.
‘Show no mercy’
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, in his first reaction to the protests this week, that rioters must be “put in their place”.
Meanwhile, Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said, “We will show no mercy to rioters this time.”
The situation was similarly tense in adjacent streets and neighbourhoods, where the protests were originally started by shopkeepers on December 28. Multiple other major shopping areas in Tehran saw huge strikes and protests on Tuesday, including Yaftabad, where police were met with shouted slogans, “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon; my life for Iran”.
Iran’s government has been accused of providing support for armed groups in Gaza and Lebanon.
More clashes were recorded around the Sina Hospital in downtown Tehran, but the Tehran University of Medical Science said in a statement that the tear gas canisters filmed inside the hospital compound were not thrown by security forces.
Demonstrations also occurred in Lorestan and Kermanshah in the west; Mashhad in the northeast; Qazvin, south of the capital; the city of Shahrekord in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari to the southwest; and the city of Hamedan, where a woman was filmed braving a police water cannon in the winter cold.
A foreign-based human rights monitor opposed to the theocratic establishment in Iran claimed at least 35 people have been killed in the protests so far. The Iranian state has not announced casualty figures, and Al Jazeera could not independently verify any.
Cooking oil triples in price
The country continues to have one of the highest inflation rates in the world, especially when it comes to the rampant increases in prices of essential food items.
The government of moderate President Masoud Pezeshkian says it is implementing plans to make sure the economic situation is contained, but a rapid decline continues to unfold.
The country’s embattled currency, the rial, was priced at more than 1.47 million to the US dollar in the open market in Tehran on Tuesday, marking yet another new all-time low that showed a lack of public and investor trust.
The price of cooking oil has experienced by far the sharpest price surge this week, more than tripling and falling further out of reach of the decimated Iranian middle class, which has seen its purchasing power dwindle since 2018, when the US unilaterally abandoned a 2015 nuclear deal and reimposed harsh sanctions.
The development comes after Pezeshkian presented a budget for the upcoming Iranian calendar year, starting in late March, that eliminated a subsidised currency rate used for certain imports, including foodstuffs.
Some economists have welcomed the rationale behind the move, which is to eliminate the rent-distributing subsidised currency rate in an attempt to combat corruption, particularly since the cheaper currency has only been abused and has failed to curb food prices.
The move was expected to lead to increased prices in the short term and face pushback from interest groups within the establishment that have benefitted from the cheap currency for years. But the oil price jump was very sudden, prompting the government to announce official prices of its own, though it remains to be seen whether the market will listen.
Using the resources to be freed from eliminating the cheaper subsidised currency, the government has offered to allocate online credits, each amounting to 10 million rials ($7 at the current exchange rate), to help people buy food.
Two renowned singers, Homayoun Shajarian and Alireza Ghorbani, joined the ranks of many people and celebrities online who said they would stop their professional activities, including scheduled concerts, in solemn observance and support for the protests.
“How can our officials lay down their heads and sleep?” asked Ali Daei, a legend of Iranian football and a respected national figure among the people, in a video interview released on Tuesday that is going viral.
“Perhaps many of them are not even Iranians, since they don’t feel sympathy for the Iranian nation.” (Al Jazeera)