Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has pledged to address mounting economic grievances in the country, saying his government is \u201cready to listen\u201d to protesters while urging them to prevent \u201crioters\u201d and \u201cterrorist elements\u201d from wreaking havoc.<\/p>\n
Pezeshkian spoke about the unrest in an interview on state television on Sunday, as the demonstrations, which began when merchants at Tehran\u2019s Grand Bazaar closed their shops over the Iranian rial\u2019s sharp depreciation, entered a third week.<\/p>\n
The Iranian president told the IRIB broadcaster that Israel and the United States were masterminding the destabilisation in the country, saying that \u201cthe same people that struck this country\u201d during Israel\u2019s 12-day war in June were \u201ctrying to escalate these unrests with regard to the economic discussion\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have trained some people inside and outside the country; they have bought in some terrorists from outside,\u201d Pezeshkian said, claiming the perpetrators had attacked a bazaar in the city of Rasht and set \u201cmosques on fire\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Iranian president said the government had heard the shopkeepers\u2019 concerns and is going to solve their problems \u201cby any means necessary\u201d. But he urged the public not to allow \u201crioters\u201d to disrupt the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cRioters are not protesting people. We hear the protesters and have made every effort to solve their problems,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The protests, which have evolved from economic grievances into broader antigovernment demonstrations, are the largest in Iran since the 2022-2023 movement spurred by the custodial death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress code for women.<\/p>\n
Death toll rises<\/p>\n
State media reported that 109 security personnel have been killed during the latest unrest. Authorities have not confirmed the number of demonstrators who have lost their lives, but opposition activists based outside the country say the death toll is higher and includes hundreds of protesters.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the figures.<\/p>\n
Footage, verified by Al Jazeera, from a morgue in Kahrizak, south of Tehran, showed dozens of bodies in black bags outside the facility, with apparent relatives searching for loved ones. State television broadcast similar scenes from Tehran\u2019s coroner\u2019s office, attributing deaths to \u201carmed terrorists\u201d.<\/p>\n
Authorities on Sunday also declared three days of national mourning \u201cin honour of martyrs killed in resistance against the United States and the Zionist regime\u201d, according to state media. Iran\u2019s Ministry of Interior claimed the unrest is subsiding as the attorney general warned participants they could face capital punishment.<\/p>\n
A nationwide internet blackout has persisted for more than 72 hours, according to monitoring groups.<\/p>\n
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Sunday he was \u201cshocked\u201d by reports of violence against protesters in Iran and called on the government to show restraint.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rights to freedom of expression, association & peaceful assembly must be fully respected & protected,\u201d he said on X.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera\u2019s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said Iranian officials had spent the past week trying to draw a distinction between protesters and what they described as foreign-trained rioters.<\/p>\n
Asadi added that senior officials had acknowledged public anger as justified, citing \u201csoaring prices, high inflation and the drastic devaluation of the local currency that right now puts a huge amount of pressure on the pockets of local people\u201d.<\/p>\n
US tensions<\/p>\n
The unrest in Iran is unfolding as US President Donald Trump pursues an assertive foreign policy, having abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and discussing acquiring Greenland by purchase or force.<\/p>\n
Trump, who has pledged to \u201chit Iran where it hurts\u201d if protesters are killed, was scheduled to meet with senior advisers on Tuesday to discuss options for Iran, a \u2060US official told the Reuters news agency. The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported that options included military strikes, using secret cyberweapons, widening sanctions and providing online help to antigovernment sources.<\/p>\n
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf issued a stark warning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the case of an attack on Iran, the occupied territories [Israel] as well as all US bases and ships will be our legitimate target,\u201d Ghalibaf told lawmakers, some of whom chanted anti-US slogans.<\/p>\n
Iranian authorities also called for nationwide rallies on Monday to condemn \u201cterrorist actions led by the United States and Israel\u201d, according to state media. Pezeshkian urged participation in what state television characterised as a \u201cnational resistance march\u201d against violence attributed to \u201curban terrorist criminals\u201d.<\/p>\n
Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University, said Iran\u2019s leadership genuinely believes \u201cit is deeply penetrated\u201d by foreign-backed elements\u201d that are able to operate in the country at will.<\/p>\n
\u201cIranian leadership deep down thinks that the protests are part of America and Israel\u2019s efforts to bring regime change in Iran,\u201d he told Al Jazeera. \u201cThis is happening in a context of war with Israel and the United States\u2026 The Iranian leadership is highly suspicious that the protests are being used by its adversaries to weaken or maybe topple the Islamic Republic. So this is not just a rhetoric that they\u2019re giving to delegitimise the protesters.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that Iran has no viable path to address the economic or security grievances.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think Iran is going to be free of protests going forward. Blood has been shed. People are very angry. And the Islamic Republic really has no way in which it could either improve the economic situation or their security issues or address their other grievances. The key issue is whether the protesters can be in the streets in large enough numbers that can overwhelm the security forces. I don\u2019t know the answer to that, because we\u2019re still early in these protests, and also because it\u2019s very difficult to get credible information out of Iran,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Solidarity protests<\/p>\n
Some US lawmakers meanwhile questioned the wisdom of taking military action against Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know that bombing Iran will have the effect that is intended,\u201d Republican Senator Rand Paul said on ABC News\u2019 This Week. Rather than undermining the \u200dregime, a military \u2060attack on Iran could rally the people against an outside enemy, he said.<\/p>\n
Democratic Senator Mark Warner agreed. Appearing on Fox News Sunday, he warned that a strike against Iran could risk uniting Iranians against the US \u201cin a way that the regime has not been able to\u201d.<\/p>\n
Demonstrations supporting Iranian protesters took place in London, Los Angeles, Paris, Berlin, and Istanbul.<\/p>\n
In the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Westwood, a rental truck drove into a crowd of a few hundred people who were holding a rally in support of \u200dthe Iranian protesters, the KNBC news outlet reported on Sunday. There was no immediate report of casualties.<\/p>\n
Iran also summoned the United Kingdom\u2019s ambassador on Sunday to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran over \u201cinterventionist comments\u201d attributed to the UK foreign minister, as well as a protester removing the Iranian flag from the London Embassy building and replacing it with a style of \u200cflag used prior to the 1979 Islamic revolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has pledged to address mounting economic grievances in the country, saying his government is…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":509948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[82055,64,79,83,99,14241,40739,228044,228043,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-509947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-al-jazeera","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-masoud-pezeshkian","14":"tag-protesters","15":"tag-rioters","16":"tag-state-television","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115880055537582959","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}