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Protests Grip Iran Over Gas Prices Hike Protests Incited by Gas Price Hike Grip Iran
(about 7 hours later)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Protesters angered by Iran’s 50 percent increase of government-set gasoline prices blocked traffic in major cities and occasionally clashed with the police on Saturday, after a night of demonstrations punctuated by gunfire, in violence that reportedly killed at least one person. Protests flared across Iran for a second day on Saturday, with angry crowds calling for the ouster of the regime in unrest incited by a steep increase in officially set gasoline prices but that quickly broadened to include other grievances.
The protests put renewed pressure on Iran’s government as it struggles to overcome United States sanctions strangling the country after President Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers. At least six people were dead after security forces clashed with protesters, according to Persian language news outlets.
Though largely peaceful, demonstrations devolved into violence in several instances, with online videos purporting to show police officers firing tear gas at protesters and mobs setting fires. While representing a political risk for President Hassan Rouhani ahead of February parliamentary elections, it also shows the widespread anger among Iran’s 80 million people who have seen their savings evaporate amid scarce jobs and the national currency’s collapse. “We don’t want an Islamic Republic, we don’t want it, we don’t want it,” demonstrators chanted in the middle-class Tehranpars neighborhood of Tehran.
The demonstrations took place in over a dozen cities in the hours following Mr. Rouhani’s decision at midnight Friday to cut gasoline subsidies to fund handouts for Iran’s poor. Gasoline in the country still remains among the cheapest in the world, with the new prices jumping to a minimum of 15,000 rials per liter of gas — up 50 percent from the day before. That’s 13 cents a liter, or about 50 cents a gallon. A gallon of regular gasoline in the United States costs $2.60, by comparison. Calling the protests “foreign instigated,” Tehran’s prosecutor warned Saturday that security forces would crack down harshly.
But in a nation where many get by as informal taxi drivers, cheap gasoline is considered a birthright. Iran is home to the world’s fourth-largest crude oil reserves. While expected for months, the decision still caught many by surprise and set off immediate demonstrations overnight. The protests erupted in dozens of cities after the government decided at midnight Friday to cut gasoline subsidies to fund handouts for Iran’s poor. That added to strains from American economic sanctions and the Iranian government’s mismanagement of the economy.
Violence broke out Friday night in Sirjan, a city some 500 miles southeast of Tehran. The state-run IRNA news agency said that “protesters tried to set fire to the oil depot, but they were stopped by police.” It did not elaborate, but online videos circulating on Iranian social media purported to show a fire at the depot as sirens wailed in the background. Another showed a large crowd shouting: “Rouhani, shame on you! Leave the country alone!” The protests then broadened to venting anger over other problems such as social repression and corruption.
Mohammad Mahmoudabadi, an Interior Ministry official in Sirjan, later told state television that the police and demonstrators exchanged gunfire, wounding several. He said many protesters were peaceful, but later masked men armed with guns and knives infiltrated the demonstration. Iran disrupted internet and cellphone service and halted phone-data reception, apparently trying to deter people from sharing information and organizing protests, according to NetBlocks, which monitors cybersecurity, and witness accounts.
“They insisted on reaching the oil depot and creating crises,” Mr. Mahmoudabadi said. “By shutting down the internet, the Iranian government isolates protesters from each other and from the rest of the world,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, the director of NetFreedom Pioneers, a technology nonprofit, who is an expert on cybersecurity in Iran. “Oppression can then exist in a vacuum without on-the-ground solidarity or accountability.”
The semiofficial ISNA news agency later quoted Mr. Mahmoudabadi as saying the violence killed one person. Under the price changes, the price for a liter of rationed gasoline rose to 15,000 rials, or about 13 cents, from 10,000 rials per liter on Thursday, and a monthly ration for each private car was set at 60 liters. Any purchases over that limit would be triple the previous price.
In Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan Province, online videos were said to show police officers firing tear gas on crowds. The province’s city of Khorramshahr also saw gunfire, as could be heard in a brief clip played on air by state television. The region has long been a political tinderbox, with an ethnic Arab population that feels disenfranchised from the country’s Persian-language majority. Gasoline in Iran still remains among the world’s cheapest.
Saturday morning, the start of the Iranian workweek, saw protesters stop cars on major roadways across the capital, Tehran. Peaceful protesters blocked traffic on Tehran’s Imam Ali Highway, calling for the police to join them as the season’s first snow fell, according to online videos. A dump truck later dropped bricks on the roadway to cheers. Parliament said it had been blindsided by the new policy and called for an emergency meeting on Sunday. Lawmakers said they would introduce legislation to reverse the price hike.
A large crowd in the city of Kermanshah demonstrated and later drew tear gas fire from the police, a video showed. Others reportedly clashed in Tabriz, another major Iranian city. The online videos corresponded to The Associated Press’s reporting on the protest. Parvaneh Salahshouri, a reformist lawmaker representing Tehran, said lawmakers had been kept in the dark. She wrote on Twitter that Parliament was powerless to act and only a facade for a sham democracy. Many constituents called her office to complain, she said.
Such protests require prior approval from Iran’s Interior Ministry, though the authorities routinely allow small-scale demonstrations over economic issues, especially as the country has struggled with currency devaluation. Several prominent Shiite clerics urged officials to backtrack before it was too late.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the police made arrests. Iranian state television aired a segment Friday night trying to dispute the claims of opposition satellite news channels about the protests, calling their videos of demonstrations “fake news” in English. Demonstrators in many online videos Saturday began identifying the time and place in response. “This decision is very unfortunate and worrisome,” said a statement by Ayatollah Safi Golpaygani. “We ask that Parliament reverse this move.”
Iranian internet access saw disruptions and outages Friday night into Saturday, suggesting “a response to limit attendance and media coverage of the protests,” according to the group NetBlocks, which monitors worldwide internet access. President Hassan Rouhani has said that the government will not benefit financially from the price increase because the money is to be returned to about 60 million needy Iranians in the form of cash subsidies. But hardly anyone across the political divide seemed to believe him.
Protester chants mirrored many from economic protests in 2017, which resulted in nearly 5,000 reported arrests and at least 25 people being killed. Some criticized Iran’s spending abroad on Palestinians and others while the country’s people remain poor. Protests continue in Iraq and Lebanon, two Mideast nations home to Iranian proxies and crucial to Tehran’s influence abroad. Mr. Rouhani acknowledged days ago that Iran faced a deficit amounting to nearly two-thirds of its annual $45 billion budget.
Iran has suffered economic problems since its 1979 Islamic Revolution cut off its decades-long relationship with the United States. Its eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s followed, further straining its economy. Iranians took to the streets on Saturday on foot and in cars. On major highways and roads across Iran, people turned off their vehicles and sat for hours, intentionally creating backups for miles and miles.
The collapse of the nuclear deal has exacerbated those problems. The Iranian rial, which traded at 32,000 to $1 at the time of the accord, fell to 122,600 to $1 in trading Saturday. Iran has s begun breaking terms of the deal as it tries to force Europe to come up with a way to allow it to sell crude oil abroad despite American sanctions. “They are out of touch with the public,” said Minoo, who works at a cafe in Tehran but asked that her last name not be published out of security concerns. “Our transportation cost has now tripled, but our salaries remain the same.”
Henry Rome, an analyst at the Eurasia Group, said that after mass protests, Mr. Rouhani was forced to back down from a 2017 plan to increase fuel prices by 50 percent. In Islamshahr, a small working-class city, crowds attacked a billboard of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Posts on social media showed that they had set it ablaze.
“The government was clearly attuned to this risk: The latest announcement was made in the middle of the night before a weekend,” Mr. Rome said. “It took effect immediately, and it was announced without direct consultation with lawmakers.” While insulting the supreme leader is an offense that can carry the death penalty, people did not seem to care.
“We are fed up,” they chanted.
In cities including Behshahr, Shiraz, Tehran and Karaj, protests turned violent when people attacked government buildings, set banks on fire, ripped the national flag and kicked and burned revolutionary monuments.
The police and demonstrators exchanged gunfire on Friday in Sirjan, a city some 500 miles southeast of Tehran, an Interior Ministry official there told state television.
The state-run IRNA news agency said “protesters tried to set fire to the oil depot,” The Associated Press reported. It quoted the official, Mohammad Mahmoudabadi, as saying, “They insisted on reaching the oil depot and creating crises.”
Around Iran, anti-riot police officers and security forces battled crowds on motorcycles and on foot, videos on social media and local news outlets showed. These accounts showed that in Karaj, a young man was shot in the head, while in Shiraz, security forces shot a young man, who collapsed to the ground, bleeding.
“They are firing on the people,” shouted the narrator of the video from Shiraz, his hands shaking as he documented the scene.
A widely shared flier urged Iranians to strike and create daily traffic jams on major roads by stopping their cars. In one video from Tehran, a truck driver carrying rock and dirt was shown stopping and dumping his haul in the middle of a three-lane highway. Passers-by cheered.
In Isfahan and Shiraz, public school was suspended Sunday after school bus drivers announced they would strike.
Protests tend to erupt in Iran every few years, but they usually lack organization and leadership. Eventually, they fizzle amid heavy-handed crackdowns and mass arrests.
Iranian opposition parties are in disarray, with domestic opposition leaders jailed and those abroad lacking legitimacy among most Iranians inside Iran.
A spate of economic protests that erupted in late 2017 led to nearly 5,000 reported arrests and the deaths of at least 25 people.