Iranwarns protesters 'must pay the price for their actions'

Iran’s biggest wave of street protests in almost a decade is presenting a mounting challenge to the country’s leadership, as calls for fresh demonstrations Sunday circulated on social media despite threats of a government crackdown.

The unrest began Thursday as a rebuke to the economic management of moderate President Hassan Rouhani, who many Iranians blame for failing to control inflation and fix high unemployment. But they have widened to more than a dozen cities, and have started to feature chants targeting Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who sits atop the country’s unique form of Islamic government.

While the full scale of the protests was difficult to judge because reporting on them was limited in state-dominated media, and foreign media access to the country is tightly controlled, government efforts to reel in the unrest set up a potential showdown for Sunday.

Iranians circulated a call via social media for further demonstrations on Sunday in cities big and small across the country, although it was unclear how many people it had reached. It included a list of cities where protests were planned.

In an apparent bid to head off demonstrations, the semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency reported Sunday that authorities were ordered to block mobile internet and some landline connections in areas where gatherings were taking place. Another report on a state television website suggested authorities were restricting connections on cellphones to Instagram and Telegram, a messaging app that is ubiquitous in Iran and has been widely used to exchange photos and video of protests.

Pavel Durov, Telegram’s chief executive, tweeted the authorities were blocking access for the majority of Iranians after the company refused to shut down peacefully protesting channels.

The government has promised to crack down on any illegal gatherings, and more than 50 people were arrested in Iran’s second city Mashhad on Thursday, but security forces’ response so far has been restrained as officials strive to address underlying concerns. A spokesman for Mr. Rouhani’s government on Saturday outlined a plan to provide more than 830,000 jobs in the next Iranian year, and rejected any suggestion that monthly cash handouts would cease as the government moved ahead with subsidy reform, according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency.

Iran’s interior minister, Abdolrahman Rahmani-Fazli, said Sunday that people who were disorderly and vandalized public property must pay the price for their actions, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. The statement echoed earlier government warnings against public demonstrations.

He said the government and parliament were resolved to consider people’s demands and solve their problems, but he also said there were groups who were ready to come out and show their support for the revolution, “and if needed they will at the right time.”

The wave of unrest is the largest in Iran since protests in 2009 over the disputed re-election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Popular anger about what many perceived as rigged voting results coalesced into the so-called Green Movement, which organized mass protests and drew a harsh government crackdown.

This time, double-digit inflation and unemployment, coupled with the planned removal of subsidies and new taxes, drove the unrest at first. Another spark was Iranians’ losses in unregulated financial schemes that have collapsed in recent years.

Mr. Rouhani won reelection in May after spearheading Iran’s nuclear deal in 2015, which removed many international sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its disputed nuclear program. But the benefits from that diplomacy have been slow to reach average Iranians, even as major foreign companies, including plane makers Boeing and Airbus and car makers Peugeot and Renault, won major new business in the country.

Cries of “Death to the dictator!” and “We don’t want the Islamic Republic, we don’t want it” could be heard Saturday as protests spread to Tehran for the first time. Many Iranians, especially younger generations born after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, view the system as oppressive and want to change how the country is governed.

Because the demonstrations have drawn in working-class crowds and centered, at least initially, on economic concerns, the government has struggled to find a response. Many of the people in the streets are Iranians who hard-line politicians court with promises of handouts, and the unrest can’t easily be dismissed as having foreign origins or being guided by an out-of-touch elite.

The protests have almost all targeted the government, but there was at least one counter-demonstration by pro-regime activists on Saturday at Tehran University. Unverified video shared on social media showed a sizable crowd chanting “The only party is Ali’s party, the only leader is Sayed Ali,” referring to Mr. Khamenei, and “Death to the hypocrite!” in reference to dissidents who oppose the regime from abroad.

U.S. President Donald Trump has tweeted repeatedly about the protests in recent days. “The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism,” he said. “Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!”

After Mr. Trump began tweeting about the protests Saturday evening, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman on Saturday dismissed what he called an American attempt to interfere in the country’s domestic affairs.

Some of the demonstrations turned violent Saturday night, with unverified pictures and video shared with The Wall Street Journal showing an overturned police car in Tehran and debris-littered streets.

One video showed a small group of people marauding through the streets, kicking garbage cans and breaking down metal barriers on medians. Another showed people tearing down an Iranian flag from a flagpole. A third showed people burning an Iranian flag.

An unverified photo from Ahvaz in southwestern Iran showed a burned-out branch of Bank Melli, a government-owned banking giant.

The deputy governor of Iran’s western Lorestan province confirmed that two protesters died Saturday night in the city of Dorood, according to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency. The deaths, the first confirmed casualties from the unrest, weren’t caused by security forces, the official said. A video circulated on social media, however, showed two people motionless on the ground, and a voice saying they had been shot by police.

(WSJ)