Iran's interior minister has suggested that up to 225 people were killed in November protests sparked by a petrol price hike, ISNA news agency reported on Sunday.
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◢ Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran had delivered a “slap to the U.S.’s image as a superpower” in this month’s military confrontation, seeking to rally Iranians around an embattled establishment as he led Friday prayers in Tehran for the first time in eight years.
◢ Iran's supreme leader is expected to lead the main weekly Muslim prayers in Tehran on Friday, after a traumatic month in which the country had appeared on the brink of war with the United States and accidentally downed a Ukrainian passenger jet. The last time Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led Friday prayers at Tehran's Mosalla mosque was in February 2012.
◢ Conditions boiled over as Iranians gathered for a second night of protests after the government admitted it had mistakenly downed a Ukrainian passenger jet, triggering global outrage as well as internal dissent. Security forces stepped up their patrols as protesters, many of them students, came out in force in Tehran’s landmark Azadi Square and at Shahid Beheshti University.
◢ Downtown Tehran was brought to a standstill Monday as mourners flooded the Iranian capital to pay an emotional homage to Qassem Soleimani, the "heroic" general killed in a US strike. Young and old were packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the streets, including women dressed in black-clad chadors and others wearing loose-fitting hijabs.
◢ Mourners flooded the Iranian cities of Ahvaz and Mashhad Sunday, weeping and beating their chests in homage to top general Qasem Soleimani who was killed in a US strike in Baghdad. In the northeastern city of Mashhad, scores took to streets around the Imam Reza shrine and, addressing the US, chanted "Be afraid of your own shadow".
◢ About three-quarters of Iranians surveyed in a government-backed poll said they supported the rights of protesters to take to the streets in last month’s countrywide demonstrations. The Iranian Students’ Polling Agency also found that 62% of respondents saw “dialogue with protesters” as the government’s best means of addressing popular discontent.
◢ Iran is willing to return to the negotiating table if the United States first drops sanctions, President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday, after a fuel price hike sparked deadly violence ahead of elections. "If they are prepared to put aside the sanctions, we are ready to talk and negotiate, even at the level of heads of the 5+1 countries," Rouhani said in remarks aired live on state television.
◢ The US Treasury slapped punitive sanctions on Iran's communications minister, Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, Friday after Tehran blocked internet communications amid violent protests triggered by a petrol price hike. On Thursday, President Donald Trump accused Iran of blocking the internet to cover up "death and tragedy" resulting from the protests.
◢ Three security personnel have been killed by "rioters" in Iran, the latest deaths in protests that showed no sign of subsiding Tuesday despite a wave of arrests and an internet shutdown. The United Nations expressed alarm on Tuesday "that the use of live ammunition has allegedly caused a significant number of deaths across the country.”
◢ Iran said it still faces "riots" even though the situation was calmer Monday after days of violent protests sparked by a shock decision to hike petrol prices in the sanctions-hit country. Major roads have been blocked, banks torched and shops looted in the nationwide unrest that has left at least two dead—a civilian and a police.
◢ Iran's supreme leader on Sunday threw his support behind a decision to hike petrol prices, a move that sparked nationwide unrest in which he said "some lost their lives.” The protests flared hours after it was announced that the price of petrol would be raised by 50 percent for the first 60 liters and by 300 percent for anything above that each month.
◢ Iran's parliament will investigate claims by a labor protest leader that he was tortured in prison following strikes at a sugar factory, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported on Sunday. Alireza Rahimi, a member of parliament's presiding board, said his request for an investigation had been accepted by speaker Ali Larijani, according to ISNA.
◢ An Iranian member of parliament denounced the arrest of several striking workers following weeks of protests at a steel plant in southwestern Iran, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported Wednesday. "A number of workers of the National Steel Group who had work-related complaints were arrested two days ago," Alireza Mahjoub, head of parliament's labor faction, said in a speech to lawmakers.
◢ Four people were arrested in southwestern Iran on Sunday as locals joined striking sugar workers in mounting protests over unpaid wages and alleged criminal activity by managers, the official IRNA news agency said. Protests by workers from the Haft Tapeh sugar company in Shush, a city in Khuzestan province, have been building in recent days.
◢ A wave of US sanctions kicks in against Iran on Tuesday, cementing Washington's hard line against Tehran after President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear pact. Already facing broad economic fallout as their currency implodes, Iranians are wondering how the next phase of the crisis in US relations will play out—and what, exactly, America's longterm strategy is toward their country.
◢ President Donald Trump on Sunday hit back at bellicose comments by Iran's president, warning him of consequences "the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered," as the US intensifies its campaign against the Islamic republic. The high-stakes verbal sparring is reminiscent of the exchanges Trump had last year with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, before the two leaders met in a historic summit last month.
◢ The United States is not afraid to sanction top-ranking leaders of the "nightmare" Iranian regime, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday, pursuing a strategy aimed at Iranian compliance with stringent US demands. Following Washington's pullout from the Iran nuclear accord that stunned Washington's closest European allies, Pompeo on May 21 unveiled the "new strategy" to force Iran's submission to a dozen demands.
