Iran’s Leaders Face Challenge Over Mounting Protests
Government efforts to reel in unrest sets up potential showdown as protests expand to more than a dozen cities
Iranian students clash with riot police during an antigovernment protest around the University of Tehran on Saturday. PHOTO:STR/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
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Iran’s biggest wave of street protests in almost a decade is presenting a mounting challenge to the country’s leadership, as demonstrations mushroomed Sunday despite threats of a government crackdown, pushing the president to appeal for calm.
The unrest began Thursday as a rebuke to the economic management of moderate President Hassan Rouhani, who many Iranians blame for failing to control inflation and fix high unemployment. But protests have widened and have featured chants targeting Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who sits atop the country’s unique form of Islamic government.
The unrest began Thursday as a rebuke to the economic management of moderate President Hassan Rouhani, who many Iranians blame for failing to control inflation and fix high unemployment. But protests have widened and have featured chants targeting Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who sits atop the country’s unique form of Islamic government.
Unverified video shared on social media showed unrest Sunday in dozens of cities, from the capital Tehran to Sandanaj and Kermanshah in the west, Isfahan in central Iran and Chabahar in the southeast. There were protests in Mashhad, where demonstrations first broke out Thursday, and in Shiraz in the south.
Some of the videos showed large numbers of people out on the street chanting against Mr. Khamenei and the Iranian system and in some cases clashing with security forces, who at times used batons and water cannons to disperse crowds. “Death to the dictator!” has been a common refrain.
As has been the case on other days, however, the precise scale of the protests was difficult to judge because reporting on them was limited in state-dominated media, and foreign media access to the country is tightly controlled.
Mr. Rouhani attempted to extend an olive branch Sunday in his first comments since the unrest, even as he admonished protesters to work hand-in-hand with the government to address corruption and economic problems.
“People are completely free to express their criticism and even protest,” he said. “But at the same time we should take into consideration that criticism and protest must be in a way that ends with the improvement of people’s and country’s conditions.”
Mr. Rouhani also slammed U.S. President Donald Trump, who has taken to tweeting about the unrest. Mr. Trump has expressed sympathy for protesters, angering the leadership of a country he considers a prime enemy and a threat to Israel.
“This man in the U.S. who wants to sympathize with our people has forgot that a few months ago he was calling the Iranian people terrorists,” Mr. Rouhani said.
Analysts say the protests have been remarkable in part because they lack a clear leader and have spread to out-of-the-way cities and towns all over the country. As they spread, they have targeted the Supreme Leader with a directness that some say hasn’t been seen since the revolution in 1979. Mr. Khamenei has final say in matters of state.
Authorities also appear to have been taken off guard by the eruption, which didn’t follow a familiar pattern of unrest in Tehran radiating out to other urban centers. These protests began in Mashhad, a Shiite holy city that contains the enormous Imam Reza shrine.
“It’s the most anti-regime event I’ve ever seen,” said Alireza Nader, a senior researcher at the Rand Corporation in Washington. “People are not calling for reforms, they’re not supporting [former reformist President Mohammad] Khatami or Rouhani. In fact their anger is directed toward the entire establishment.”
In an apparent bid to head off demonstrations, the Iranian Labor News Agency reported Sunday that authorities were ordered to block mobile internet and some landline connections in areas where gatherings were taking place. Another report on a state television website suggested authorities were restricting connections on cellphones to Instagram and Telegram, a messaging app that is ubiquitous in Iran and has been widely used to exchange photos and video of protests.
Pavel Durov, Telegram’s chief executive, tweeted the authorities were blocking access for the majority of Iranians after the company refused to shut down peacefully protesting channels, including one that was giving times and places for protests and distributing videos of unrest.
Telegram shut down reformist journalist and activist Roohollah Zam’s @amadnews channel on Saturday after it issued calls to use Molotov cocktails and firearms against police, Mr. Durov said. But Telegram wouldn’t shut down another peaceful channel that replaced it, he said.
The government has promised to crack down on any illegal gatherings, and new reports of arrests surfaced Sunday.
Aliasghar Naserbakht, Tehran’s deputy governor for security, said Sunday that authorities arrested about 200 people in Tehran the previous night, according to the semi-official ILNA. Ali Aghazadeh, the governor general of Iran’s Markazi Province, said more than 100 were arrested on Saturday night, according to the semi-official Tasnim News Agency. More than 50 were also arrested in Mashhad on Thursday.
The wave of unrest is the largest in Iran since protests in 2009 over the disputed re-election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Popular anger about what many perceived as rigged voting results coalesced into the so-called Green Movement, which organized mass protests and drew a harsh government crackdown.
This time, double-digit inflation and unemployment, coupled with the planned removal of subsidies and new taxes, drove the unrest at first. Another spark was Iranians’ losses in unregulated financial schemes that have collapsed in recent years.
The jury is still out on whether the building demonstrations will become a tipping point toward revolution. Cliff Kupchan, the chairman of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, said there were notable differences between the mass 2009 protests and these demonstrations, which “show no well-defined demands, no leadership or organization, and are diffused around Iran.”
“Their size is much smaller,” he said in a note, although he added they could damage the regime’s legitimacy, and that protests were inherently unpredictable.
Mr. Rouhani won reelection in May after spearheading Iran’s nuclear deal in 2015, which removed many international sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its disputed nuclear program. But the benefits from that diplomacy have been slow to reach average Iranians, even as major foreign companies, including plane makers Boeing and Airbus and car makers Peugeot and Renault, won major new business in the country.
Because the demonstrations have drawn in working-class crowds and centered, at least initially, on economic concerns, the government has struggled to find a response. Many of the people in the streets are Iranians who hard-line politicians court with promises of handouts, and the unrest can’t easily be dismissed as having foreign origins or being guided by an out-of-touch elite.
Many Iranians, especially younger generations born after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, view the system as oppressive and want to change how the country is governed.
The protests have almost all targeted the government and ruling system, though there have been a few counter-demonstrations by the system’s supporters.
Those supporters have dismissed the protests as illegal vandalism, even as they acknowledged and pledged to address a litany of complaints that have driven the unrest.
“Nobody should overlook people’s protests,” said Amir Mohebian, a professor and strategist aligned with the country’s conservatives. “People have demands and the system should remove the problems as much as it can. But vandalism and anarchism will not be tolerated anywhere in the world.”
President Trump has tweeted repeatedly about the protests in recent days. “The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism,” he said. “Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!”
After he began tweeting about the protests Saturday evening, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman on Saturday dismissed what he called an American attempt to interfere in the country’s domestic affairs.
Some of the videos showed large numbers of people out on the street chanting against Mr. Khamenei and the Iranian system and in some cases clashing with security forces, who at times used batons and water cannons to disperse crowds. “Death to the dictator!” has been a common refrain.
As has been the case on other days, however, the precise scale of the protests was difficult to judge because reporting on them was limited in state-dominated media, and foreign media access to the country is tightly controlled.
Mr. Rouhani attempted to extend an olive branch Sunday in his first comments since the unrest, even as he admonished protesters to work hand-in-hand with the government to address corruption and economic problems.
“People are completely free to express their criticism and even protest,” he said. “But at the same time we should take into consideration that criticism and protest must be in a way that ends with the improvement of people’s and country’s conditions.”
Mr. Rouhani also slammed U.S. President Donald Trump, who has taken to tweeting about the unrest. Mr. Trump has expressed sympathy for protesters, angering the leadership of a country he considers a prime enemy and a threat to Israel.
“This man in the U.S. who wants to sympathize with our people has forgot that a few months ago he was calling the Iranian people terrorists,” Mr. Rouhani said.
Analysts say the protests have been remarkable in part because they lack a clear leader and have spread to out-of-the-way cities and towns all over the country. As they spread, they have targeted the Supreme Leader with a directness that some say hasn’t been seen since the revolution in 1979. Mr. Khamenei has final say in matters of state.
Authorities also appear to have been taken off guard by the eruption, which didn’t follow a familiar pattern of unrest in Tehran radiating out to other urban centers. These protests began in Mashhad, a Shiite holy city that contains the enormous Imam Reza shrine.
“It’s the most anti-regime event I’ve ever seen,” said Alireza Nader, a senior researcher at the Rand Corporation in Washington. “People are not calling for reforms, they’re not supporting [former reformist President Mohammad] Khatami or Rouhani. In fact their anger is directed toward the entire establishment.”
In an apparent bid to head off demonstrations, the Iranian Labor News Agency reported Sunday that authorities were ordered to block mobile internet and some landline connections in areas where gatherings were taking place. Another report on a state television website suggested authorities were restricting connections on cellphones to Instagram and Telegram, a messaging app that is ubiquitous in Iran and has been widely used to exchange photos and video of protests.
Pavel Durov, Telegram’s chief executive, tweeted the authorities were blocking access for the majority of Iranians after the company refused to shut down peacefully protesting channels, including one that was giving times and places for protests and distributing videos of unrest.
Telegram shut down reformist journalist and activist Roohollah Zam’s @amadnews channel on Saturday after it issued calls to use Molotov cocktails and firearms against police, Mr. Durov said. But Telegram wouldn’t shut down another peaceful channel that replaced it, he said.
The government has promised to crack down on any illegal gatherings, and new reports of arrests surfaced Sunday.
Aliasghar Naserbakht, Tehran’s deputy governor for security, said Sunday that authorities arrested about 200 people in Tehran the previous night, according to the semi-official ILNA. Ali Aghazadeh, the governor general of Iran’s Markazi Province, said more than 100 were arrested on Saturday night, according to the semi-official Tasnim News Agency. More than 50 were also arrested in Mashhad on Thursday.
This time, double-digit inflation and unemployment, coupled with the planned removal of subsidies and new taxes, drove the unrest at first. Another spark was Iranians’ losses in unregulated financial schemes that have collapsed in recent years.
The jury is still out on whether the building demonstrations will become a tipping point toward revolution. Cliff Kupchan, the chairman of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, said there were notable differences between the mass 2009 protests and these demonstrations, which “show no well-defined demands, no leadership or organization, and are diffused around Iran.”
“Their size is much smaller,” he said in a note, although he added they could damage the regime’s legitimacy, and that protests were inherently unpredictable.
Mr. Rouhani won reelection in May after spearheading Iran’s nuclear deal in 2015, which removed many international sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its disputed nuclear program. But the benefits from that diplomacy have been slow to reach average Iranians, even as major foreign companies, including plane makers Boeing and Airbus and car makers Peugeot and Renault, won major new business in the country.
Because the demonstrations have drawn in working-class crowds and centered, at least initially, on economic concerns, the government has struggled to find a response. Many of the people in the streets are Iranians who hard-line politicians court with promises of handouts, and the unrest can’t easily be dismissed as having foreign origins or being guided by an out-of-touch elite.
Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!
The protests have almost all targeted the government and ruling system, though there have been a few counter-demonstrations by the system’s supporters.
Those supporters have dismissed the protests as illegal vandalism, even as they acknowledged and pledged to address a litany of complaints that have driven the unrest.
“Nobody should overlook people’s protests,” said Amir Mohebian, a professor and strategist aligned with the country’s conservatives. “People have demands and the system should remove the problems as much as it can. But vandalism and anarchism will not be tolerated anywhere in the world.”
President Trump has tweeted repeatedly about the protests in recent days. “The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism,” he said. “Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!”
After he began tweeting about the protests Saturday evening, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman on Saturday dismissed what he called an American attempt to interfere in the country’s domestic affairs.
—Farnaz Fassihi contributed to this article.
Write to Asa Fitch at asa.fitch@wsj.com
https://www.wsj.com/articles/iranian-government-warns-protesters-must-pay-the-price-for-their-actions-1514730130
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