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Updated 7.10pm
TEAR GAS FILLED the streets of downtown Tehran today as protests spilled into a third day, with the government warning against further “illegal gatherings”.
There was chaos around the University of Tehran as several hundred people scuffled with police and shouted slogans against the regime for several hours, bringing traffic to a standstill.
But the regime also put on a show of strength, with hundreds of counter-demonstrators seizing control of the university entrance in Tehran, chanting “Death to the seditionists”.
Videos shared by social media users outside Iran claimed to show thousands marching peacefully in several cities including Khorramabad, Zanjan and Ahvaz, with chants of “Death to the dictator”.
RFE / RL/TwitterAnnual nationwide pro-government rallies are taking place across Iran amid a wave of protests in several cities sparked by a surge in prices of basic food supplies, such as eggs and poultry. https://t.co/kjvZ68t0rz pic.twitter.com/D6jYzWf17O
— Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (@RFERL) December 30, 2017
But a swirl of wild rumours online, combined with travel restrictions and a near-total media blackout from official agencies, made it difficult to verify footage.
Telecoms minister Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi accused one popular Telegram channel of encouraging the “use of Molotov cocktails, armed uprising, and social unrest”.
Hadi Nili / Twitter.@telegram appears to have blocked the channel AmadNews. This channel reportedly posted video of a man threatening to use guns if the government tries to stop the #IranProtests.https://t.co/bZfMefYsMG
— Hadi Nili (@HadiNili) December 30, 2017
The authorities were fortunate that annual rallies marking the defeat of the last major protest movement in 2009 were already scheduled for this morning and brought thousands of regime enthusiasts to the streets across the country.
“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,” warned Interior Minister Abdolrahman Rahmani Fazli.
https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews/videos/10155441702627217/
The protests began in the second city of Mashhad on Thursday as an attack on high living costs but quickly turned against the Islamic regime as a whole.
There were even chants in favour of the monarchy toppled by the Islamic revolution of 1979, while others criticised the regime for supporting the Palestinians and other regional movements rather than focusing on problems at home.
State news channel IRINN said it had been banned from covering the protests that spread to towns and cities including Qom and Kermanshah.
“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, a prominent cleric, told a crowd in Tehran, according to the conservative Fars news agency.
Other officials also pointed the blame outside Iran.
“Although people have a right to protest, protesters must know how they are being directed,” Massoumeh Ebtekar, vice president in charge of women’s affairs, wrote on Twitter.
She posted images from Twitter accounts based in the United States and Saudi Arabia, voicing support for the Mashhad protests.
Washington said that the ‘world is watching’:
Donald J. Trump / Twitter
Donald J. Trump / Twitter / Twitter
Nonetheless, officials warned against dismissing the public anger seen in recent days.
“The country is facing serious challenges with unemployment, high prices, corruption, lack of water, social gap, unbalanced distribution of budget,” wrote Hesamoddin Ashena, cultural adviser to President Hassan Rouhani, on Twitter.
“People have the right for their voice to be heard.”
There has been particular anger at welfare cuts and fuel price increases in the latest budget announced earlier this month.
Since the 2009 protests were ruthlessly put down by the Revolutionary Guards, many middle-class Iranians have abandoned hope of pressing for change from the streets.
But low-level strikes and demonstrations have continued, often on a sector-by-sector basis as bus drivers or 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 unauthorised lending institutions which collapsed with the loss of hundreds of thousands of accounts.
Payam Parhiz, editor-in-chief of reformist media network Nazar 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 AFP.
“Today, the concerns are economic. There are people who have lost their life savings. They will protest until their problems are resolved.”
Since taking power in 2013, President Hassan Rouhani has sought to clean up the banking sector and kickstart the economy, but many say progress has been too slow.
Aware that economic problems can quickly spiral into political chaos, officials from across the political spectrum have called for greater efforts to tackle poverty and the 12 percent unemployment rate.
“Solving people’s economic problems is the chief priority in the country,” tweeted Ebrahim Raisi, the hardline cleric defeated by Rouhani in May’s presidential election.
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Great to see him in a Santa hat in the photo. Very festive.
@peter moran
Had to look back at the picture to see what you meant, then spat my coffee out with laughter!
@Peter Moran: Had to look back also loved it.
@Peter Moran: very very good @Peter Moran :)
Organised by the west. They need to find a new war fast after losing in Syria
@JJ: I was wondering how long it would take the tin foil hats to blame the West or Israel. Good luck to the people of Iran rising up against the tyrannical clerics.
@JJ: Death to Iranian theocracy!!
@JJ: So according to you, people protesting against corruption, high prices, unemployment, government incompetence and general lack of political and religious freedoms is somehow a convoluted plot by the West to start a civil war in Iran!!! Even the Iranian regime aren’t making that claim. Would you have proof of this claim you are making?
@JJ:
Either that or the ordinary decent people of Iran are just sick of being under the rule of a theocratic dictatorship….
@Richard Keogh: freedom.
@JJ: Nothing from the journal on the 100′s of thousands protesting corruption in Israel this week. A few hundred protesting in Iran is a big story though. The western media will milk this as justification for another war.
@Richard Keogh: If you understood the last 100 years of Iranian history you would have a different opinion.
@Martin Black: I see that they also have an RTE station over there too. And we taught that we had a monopoly on that sort of thing. wonder do they also charge a fortune to watch Daniel O’Donnell and Ryan Tubridy or their version of them, but in turbins. Nice.
@Mick Jordan: JJ has a point and this ain’t the first time this has happened either. Nethanyahoo could be going to jail in 2018 with corruption charges being brought against him. The Israeli backed Isis got their asses handed to them on a plate in Syria and the whole ‘great’ Israeli project is being scattered to the wind thanks to Trump and Putin.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/19/cia-admits-role-1953-iranian-coup
@GITBTSWORDS: And this has what to do with internal disillusionment in Iran? Iranian corruption has nothing to do with the West neither has the regimes theocratic oppressive rule. Because of the internet, young Iranians can see the freedoms enjoyed here in the West and like young people everywhere, want the same for themselves. Is the West to be blamed for that too?
@Richard Keogh: “hundreds” reported protesting in a population of over 80 million, and the world’s biggest fascist, Trump says the world is watching. Pity Trump didn’t have the same view when thousands of his own citizens were protesting against the oil pipeline across native American land.
@Dinny Harkin: Protests against an oil pipeline are equivalent in your brain to protests against a theocratic dictatorship?
Have a lie down.
@Avina Laaf: Over here I believe they are just called thugs by the fine upstanding political activists……..
@Kerry Blake:
‘Over here’ we have absolutely no idea of what it’s like to live under an unelected dictatorship. At least we can vote out our government if we don’t like them.
@Avina Laaf: Leo wasn’t elected leader…
@Barra O Brien: *sigh*
Yes he was – he was elected by his constituents like every other TD in the country.
Who elected the Supreme Leader in Iran – apart from theocrats?
Give us a buzz when you’ve caught up on Democracy 101.
The majority population of Iran is very young, most born after the Islamic Revolution. All they have ever known is the repression of the theocracy. Old religious zealots dictating their daily lives. And they know and can see how young people live here in the west, the freedoms they have, to wear what they like, to listen to what ever music or watch what movies they like. To be able to speak freely against the Government. They are tired of the corruption and incompetence, and want sanctions, caused by the regimes actions, lifted. They want to have the freedom of choice, to be religious or not, to be liberal or conservative as they feel, to live an Islamic lifestyle or a western one. And that is why they are protesting.
We can thank the internet for that
@Mick Jordan: I’m not sure if that is accurate Mick. These protests seem to be internal and domestic in nature. I don’t think this is a Berlin Wall moment but it may grow into something bigger than budget complaints.
@Mick Jordan: The Iranian government announced last week that dress code would no longer be an arrestable offence. Mick, you will have to try harder. Meanwhile this week 57 teenagers in Israel wrote to their government to say they would not join the military and as a result they are facing years in prison
@Clever Jake: The difference here is “We” the people decide who gets to make our laws. In Iran a small number of elite clerics decide with NO input from the population.
@Cal Mooney: And what of the women arrested for trying to attend a volleyball game by the National men’s team? Or the Film maker jailed for making movies that were deemed by the regime to be Anti Islamic? Or the young girl hanged for adultery by “allowing” herself to be raped by her married teacher?
@Joe Caulfield: protests against the government do generally tend to be internal and domestic
@Mick Jordan: Mick I challenged your facts and you ignored my response. If the US really gave a damn about the lives of innocent people, they would immediately irradicate the Saudi regime instead of supporting it. Iran is paradise in terms of citizen rights compared to Saudi Arabia. But there’s too much money in it for the US war machine to go any other path.
@Cal Mooney: The story has nothing to do with Isreal, Saudi, the US or anyone else. This is about Iran, and your Whataboutary is nothing more than an attempt to direct the narrative away from the main story at hand. And that is why I am ignoring your attempt.
@Mick Jordan: Yet you saw fit to pit out misinformation about dress code still being an arrestable offence in Iran. That is why I challenge your motivation. You condemn the Iranians but have nothing to say in response to US support of murdering regimes like Saudi Arabia or Israel.
@Dave O Keeffe: Tell that to Mick.
@Cal Mooney: Speaking of Misiformation. What about yours. “The semi-official Tasnim news agency said violators will instead be made to attend classes given by police. It said repeat offenders could still be subject to legal action, and the dress code remains in place outside the capital”. So the changes are slight and do not apply outside the capital and repeat offenders will face prosecution is the changes amount to nothing.
@Joe Caulfield: Where did I claim they were anything but internal? Can you point it out?
@Clever Jake: Do you vote Yes or No? If Yes then you, me and everyone else that does choses who sit in the Dail and make our laws. If you don’t then that is Your choice. In Iran the people don’t get that choice.
@Mick Jordan: Have you ever spent time in Iran? It doesn’t sound like it.
@Patrick J. O’Rourke: And what have I said So far that is inaccurate?
@Clever Jake: If you don’t like the democratic laws we have here you have the choice to live elsewhere. Try North Korea, Iran, Cuba, China, Russia, Venezuela, Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Laos, Saudi Arabia for starters. You may find they are more accommodating to your wants.
@Mick Jordan: And they know and can see how young people live here in the west, the freedoms they have, to wear what they like, to listen to what ever music or watch what movies they like.
They want to have the freedom of choice, to be religious or not, to be liberal or conservative as they feel, to live an Islamic lifestyle or a western one. And that is why they are protesting.
@Joe Caulfield: Yes they can see the freedoms we have and they want them too. It is because they “don’t” have those freedoms internally in Iran that they are protesting. The West is not imposing those ideas on young Iranians, they are protesting because are seeing them and they want them too. Now how you think what I wrote comes to any other conclusion is rather baffling.
@Clever Jake: You are waffling. What has anything you have written got to do with the current story? We all know your views but nobody cares.
@Clever Jake: Are you seriously equating our political system and the regime in Iran? I’ve read your posts and it seems like you’re coming worryingly close to suggesting such a ridiculous false equivalence exists.
@Clever Jake: I’m glad – but your comments suggest otherwise.
“Our citizens cannot campaign or critique this insidious debacle because they will arrest you with the machinations of the Stasi/Putin/Iranian clerics”
Absolutely untrue. People have been criticising and protesting against drug prohibition unmolested for years – I know because I’ve done it. To compare the treatment of Iranian anti-regime protesters and Irish anti-prohibition protesters is just disingenuous nonsense – and you know it.
Iranians have had their satellite dishes removed from their houses so they can’t hear or see anything ‘morally depraved’ – here we are freely discussing drug laws on an Irish site as thousands of others do. Protests against drug laws happen outside the Dáil frequently. Can you imagine what would happen to an Iranian anti-regime protester in Tehran? You’re fooling yourself big time if you think there’s any comparison here.
“Our government/Gardai behaves in the same manner as the Iranian government and crushes any non-compliance in their cruel laws and so called justice systems :(”
No, they don’t. Rubbish, plain and simple. Iranian police *tortured pro-democracy protesters* after an ‘election’. Comparing anything that happens here to that kind of treatment suggests you are totally clueless when it comes to the level of depravity the Iranian regime inflicts on protesters.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/aug/09/iran-protesters-torture-election
@Joe Caulfield: the protest by people in the country against the government of the country is the very definitive of internal and domestic. Its not foreigners coming to protest against a local government. It’s not locals protesting against a foreign government.
@Clever Jake: “the same manner is not saying do the same.”
It’s not even the same manner, though. Nothing about the two are comparable. We have drug laws, I disagree with them, you disagree with them, but our democracy has a system whereby we petition our local representatives to affect change.
That’s how it works – we can change the laws if enough people speak up (and vote accordingly). Thankfully, this is happening, gradually. If you’ve been following the situation, cannabis legalisation (especially for medical use) is looking more and more likely as the months go on.
If everybody in Ireland decided before the next election that they would insist on cannabis legalisation, many politicians coming around to the doorsteps would pick up on this demand and make it part of their policy, these politicians would do well. Sadly, though Irish people in general favour cannabis legalisation they aren’t making it a priority issue when the local politicians come knocking – this needs to change if the process is going to go further.
Nothing like this exists in Iran for democracy advocates. They cannot vote for a change to the system because the unelected Supreme Leader has the final say on all legislation. Thus your comparison falls apart. We can implement change as citizens if we want to, Iranians cannot. There is simply no parallel between the two situations – not the ‘machinations’ and not the severity.
“Saying that I equated both countries treatment of people is the definition of a false equivalence”
No it isn’t. A false equivalence is incorrectly portraying two things as equal when they aren’t. I’m accusing you of doing that – how my accusation falsely equating two things?
@Clever Jake: More waffle.
@Clever Jake: We don’t have to vote for government appointed/approved candidates, that’s just flat out false – nobody is making you do any such thing. Anti-government candidates are not in short supply (unlike in Iran) if you want to vote for them, many people do.
We’ll agree to disagree, enjoy the darts Jake – happy new year.
@Clever Jake: Do you believe in democratic law and order or are you in favour of do what ever you like without consequences?
@Mick Jordan: not every country wants what you are saying they are missing. they have very good reasons to be very anti amercica .. but this protest is Cost of living . or do you work for the CIA..
@Malachi: They are changing very fast in iran. democracy as you are putting it is not their game..
@Mick Jordan: “And they know and can see how young people live here in the west, the freedoms they have, to wear what they like, to listen to what ever music or watch what movies they like. To be able to speak freely against the Government.”
So you’ve never been to Iran then? Any chance you live in the Deep South USA? You share their ‘qualities’.
@Cormac Ó Braonáin: Are you claiming that they can protest the Government freely, that women and Girls are free to wear whatever they like, that Western music and Films are freely available, that corruption and graft are not endemic, that unemployment is not high or inflation rising rapidly?
@Michael Heery: And what is?
US media on foreign (Middle Eastern mainly) protests: “This is a wonderful sight to behold and the government should acknowledge them and give them whatever changes they want!”
US media on domestic protests: “These people are a bunch of thugs”
@Franklin Roosevelt: I don’t know what US media you are watching but CNN, MSNBC etc hail violent groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa as civil rights icons of a generation.
@Martin Black: do you have a YouTube clip for proof?
Or do you just talk rubbish as usual?
Go ahead and call Nazis “very fine people,” that’ll put the cherry on top of the alt-right cake.
@Martin Black: I thought that you said last night that you only put up “facts” on here.Is that correct ? If so,why post that lying load of sh.it ?
@Franklin Roosevelt:
You just make it up as you go along to try and suit your agenda. Very leftie of you
2017 is turning out to be a pretty awesome year for the good guys in Israel, mazel tov!!
@Mike Hall: careful now your anti-Semitism is showing, Adolf.
@Martin Black: can it be anti-semitism when all he did was mention the state and their alleged crimes? Is calling the Irish government incompetent anti-catholic?
@Martin Black: I assume you meant in Palestine, when you referred to “the good guys”. It was hardly a good year for the Zionist crusades.
@Dave O Keeffe: Whatever it was, dear old Mike had another one of his comments deleted. Was he saying someone worked for the embassy, or was an Israeli, a member of Mossad, or *gasp* a Zionist? Lol
@Honeybadger197:
Poor Mike, he just can’t help himself…
@Avina Laaf: Bless his cotton socks
@Dave O Keeffe: Israeli Trolls, any criticism of Israeli war crimes are automatically met with the anti semitic accusation, shows how weak their argument is,
@Pat Price: its the same on both sides of the argument
Now if only the people of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar can have free elections and equality for all, it would be a much better world. Bahrain tried a few years ago but it was crushed with the assistance of the Saudi’s.
The same Saudi’s that are on the UN Human Rights Council and the same that are using western technology to throw Yemen back into the stone age.
These people, after all they’ve been through, are an inspiration. People Power, all the way.
Great to see them face down the theocrats.
Any serious protest will be violently suppressed,modern Governments no longer fear the mob they have the firepower.
Why isn’t trump watching dr Congo , Liberia.
Look at the end of the day the people been arrested are breaking there countries rules and laws I don’t agree with them but that’s the way it is.
Iam sick of this a country flush with oil and as soon as something happens, oh the poor people we should invade to free them.
Liberia reported the other day over 125 children have been used as suicide bombers just this year gone.
D r Congo we all know about the 10000 women murdered and sold every year and the countless rapes of children.
Watch that instead trump. Help people that have been looking for help for more than 2 decades.
Rant over
@Shane Delaney: It’s Nigeria that those kids are used as suicide bombers.
@Brian Ward: sorry about that your right and I got the number wrong it’s 135. Very sad.
But my point stands.
Help these people.
Obamas bribe Dollars must have ran out.
@Remy: news update. Obama is no longer President of the US.
@Fiona deFreyne: News Update : It was the Iranian money to begin with.Poor Remy.
@Fiona deFreyne:
No S#it Tony
@Remy: actually it’s the lifting of sanctions that has indirectly caused the public protests in Iran, the economy in Iran has improved since the sanctions were lifted and the protests are about sections of the public that think only the ruling class are benefiting and want a more fair and equitable distribution of the monetary benefits.
@Diaspora’d:
Or is just could be that Iranian Muslims protesting are “Islamophobic”(oxymoron), for not wanting an Islamic government.
@Fiona deFreyne:
Wow, that’s not BS. Is this a New year’s resolution kicking in early ?
This could change the Muslim world if it goes the right way
Wtf why are they in revolt? Obama said these guys were just swell.
At 1st glance of the foto, I thot he ws wearin a Santy Hat…
In the US you can protest ’till your blue in the mouth. in the twin party dictatorship. nothing changes.
Let’s hope this is the end of another disgraceful, inhumane regime that has too long suppressed the will of Iranians – a police state, a theocracy, a human rights catastrophe and a tyranny that underestimates the resistance it faces.
‘ash-shab yurid isqat an-nizam // the people want to bring down the regime’
Looks like Hassan Rouhani is wearing a Santy hat in that file photo
Shia Islam is a form of monarchy, is their head of state a descendant of the founder of Islam ?
@Tom Molloy: No the Religious Supreme Leader is elected much the same way the Pope is. By a a small collection of elite clerics, the choose one from amongst themselves to be the Supreme Leader.
@Mick Jordan: The president and parliament are elected however the supreme leader has a veto on which parties and candidates can contest the elections….
@John003: The President and Parliment can make no laws that the Supreme Leader does not approve of. They are nothing more than a rubber stamp. Much the same as the Russian Parliment and Prime Minister or the Chinese Party Congress.
@Mick Jordan: Was it not the case that the vicious and centuries old conflict is when Mohamed died some of his followers believed that Islam should be ruled by a committee((Sunni) but that others believed that it should be ruled by a descendant(Shia). Like the head of British Apostolic Catholicism(Pope) is elected but the head of British Catholicism, Anglicanism(Queen) is a hereditary position
@Tom Molloy: I don’t believe any of Iran’s religious leaders have made the claim that they are decended from Ali, (Mohammad’s nephew, him being an Arab and they Persian).
Send the clown (Bojo) back in to sort it out………..he has a great success rate there.
The women of Iran have been resisting compulsory Hajib for months refusing to ware it and confronting the religious police….People of Iran are protesting about poverty and no jobs…The Islamic state is spending all the money on wars in Syria Yemen Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebonan….Not really a democracy but an Islamic republic….
@John003:
Errrr….
Iran are fighting AGAINST Islamic State!
You are better off with a strongman regime in these Islamic nations otherwise you end up with Iraq, Syria or Libya.
@Horace: Iraq, Saddam Hussein = Halabja massacre, genocide of the Kurdish people using chemical weapons. Army used to massacre civilians regularly. Harboured international jihadists.
Libya, Col. Gaddafi = Had his army open fire on innocent civilians, funded and harboured international jihadists.
Syria, Bashar al-Assad = Had his army open fire on innocent civilians, used chemical weapons on civilians, used barrel bombs on civilians, had his Hezbollah goons assassinate foreign politicians with car bombs.
Now, you were saying – these countries are better off with strongmen dictators?
@Malachi:
It’s fair to say that apart from Israel that the ME is a shit box of a region, dictators, regimes, religious theocratic nations, all regressive, all powder kegs that can ignite at any minute.
@Remy: Not sure what that has to do with anything – either brutal, mass-murdering fascist strongmen in place is a good thing or it isn’t.
Lebanon is an imperfect democracy. Within the wider MENA, in Tunisia there was a revolution against the strongman dictator and a representative democracy was formed, which has a secular constitution. Kuwait is semi-democratic with an excellent liberal constitution. It’s not impossible, if that’s what you were implying.
Trump needs to lead the way to finally overthrow that rotten government once and for all. Most Iranians by all accounts aren’t even religious anymore. They have had too much religion.
@Deano Cracow: I agree give Trump a gun and a helmet and send him out there alone.
@Kerry Blake: Confusing how he was in perfect health running for public office yet ineligible for army service. Was that ever explained?
@Deano Cracow: TIme to overthrow the regime that has destroyed Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan……..no joke !!
Sounds just like the Trump rallies
Trump says “”the world is watching” what a useless idiot, a paper tiger as the chinese once said – very apt when applied to the ginger nut.
Living in an islamic state must not be as wonderful as some would have us believe, rise up Iran, free yourselves.
“The world is watching” …….3 million plus dead in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan on packs of lies and this dumb MF Trump comes out and says the world is watching…..honestly these people are the most arrogant dumb human beings on the planet !!
have your say