Protests in Iran raged in the streets until Thursday with demonstrators remembering a bloody crackdown in the country’s southeast, even as the intelligence minister and army chief renewed threats against local dissent and the wider world.
The protests in Iran, sparked by the September 16 death of a 22-year-old woman after she was arrested by the country’s morality police, have grown into one of the biggest sustained challenges to the nation’s theocracy since the chaotic months after the Islamic movement in 1979. Revolution.
At least 328 people have been killed and 14,825 others arrested in the unrest, according to Activists for Human Rights in Iran, a group monitoring the protests during their 54 days. For weeks, the Iranian government has remained silent on the death toll, while state media counterfactually claims that security forces did not kill anyone.
As protesters now return to the streets to mark the 40th day of commemoration for those killed earlier – commemorations common in Iran and the wider Middle East – the protests may turn into cyclical confrontations between an increasingly disillusioned public and security forces that turn to more violence to suppress. them.
Despite the government’s efforts to clamp down on the internet, online videos originating in Iran appear to show demonstrations in Tehran, the capital, as well as in cities elsewhere in the country. Near Isfahan, the video showed clouds of tear gas. Cries of “Death to the dictator” – a common chant at protests targeting Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – were heard.
