Iranians took to the streets in new protests on Saturday to press the biggest movement against the Islamic republic in more than three years, as authorities sustained an internet blackout as part of a crackdown that has left dozens dead.
Protests have taken place across Iran for 13 days in a movement sparked by anger over the rising cost of living that is now marked by calls for the end of the clerical system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution which ousted the pro-Western shah.
In Tehran’s Sadatabad district, people banged pots and chanted anti-government slogans including “death to Khamenei”, in reference to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as cars hooted in support, a video verified by AFP showed.
Other social media images showed similar protests elsewhere in Tehran, while videos published by Persian-language television channels based outside Iran showed large numbers taking part in new protests in the eastern city of Mashhad, Tabriz in the north and the holy city of Qom.
These protests followed giant demonstrations on Thursday that were the biggest in Iran since the 2022-2023 protest movement sparked by the custody death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the dress rules for women.
The rallies came as internet monitor NetBlocks said authorities imposed a “nationwide internet shutdown” for the last 24 hours that was violating the rights of Iranians and “masking regime violence”.
Amnesty International said the “blanket internet shutdown” aims to “hide the true extent of the grave human rights violations and crimes under international law they are carrying out to crush” the protests.
Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights, raising a previous toll of 45 issued the day earlier, said at least 51 protesters, including nine children, have been killed by security forces and hundreds more injured.
In his first comments on the escalating protests since January 3, Khamenei on Saturday called the demonstrators “vandals” and “saboteurs”.
Khamenei, in a speech broadcast on state TV, said US President Donald Trump’s hands “are stained with the blood of more than a thousand Iranians”, in apparent reference to Israel’s June war against the Islamic republic, which the US supported and joined with strikes of its own.
He predicted the “arrogant” US leader would be “overthrown” like the imperial dynasty that ruled Iran up to the 1979 revolution.
“Everyone knows the Islamic republic came to power with the blood of hundreds of thousands of honourable people, it will not back down in the face of saboteurs.”
On Saturday, Trump said it looked like the Iranian leaders were “in big trouble” and reiterated his warning that he could order military strikes.
“It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago,” Trump said.
Asked on his message to Iran’s leaders, Trump added: “You better not start shooting because we’ll start shooting too.”
The son of the shah of Iran ousted by the 1979 Islamic Revolution, US-based Reza Pahlavi, urged Trump to intervene to help the protesters, adding “the people will be on the streets again in an hour”.
But judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei warned that punishment of “rioters” would be “decisive, the maximum and without any legal leniency”.
The intelligence branch of the Revolutionary Guards, the security force entrusted with ensuring the preservation of the Islamic republic, said the “continuation of this situation is unacceptable” and protecting the revolution was its “red line”.
Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, who lives in exile, warned security forces could be preparing to commit a “massacre under the cover of a sweeping communications blackout”.
The leaders of France, the United Kingdom and Germany on Saturday issued a joint statement condemning what they described as the “killing of protestors” in Iran, urging the authorities to “exercise restraint”.
Meanwhile, Iranian state television on Saturday broadcast images of thousands of people attending counter-protests and brandishing slogans in favour of the authorities in some Iranian cities.
The Haalvsh rights group, which focuses on the Baluch Sunni minority in the southeast, said security forces fired on protesters in Zahedan, the main city of Sistan-Baluchistan province, after Saturday prayers, causing an unspecified number of casualties.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a joint statement that since the start of the protests on December 28, security forces “have unlawfully used rifles, shotguns loaded with metal pellets, water cannon, tear gas and beatings to disperse, intimidate and punish largely peaceful protesters”.
– Agence France-Presse