The Associated Press cited reports from the capital city of Tehran, plus the cities Isfahan, Shiraz, and Mashhad, that described the protests as the largest since the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement of 2022. That movement began with the death of a young Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s infamous “morality police” after she was detained for allegedly wearing her mandatory headscarf improperly.
The new protests, which reportedly broke out from universities and spread to merchant districts across Iran, were prompted by the value of the rial falling to about 1.42 million per U.S. dollar. The rial was trading at 430,000 to the dollar when Iranian central bank chief Mohammad Reza Farzin took office in 2022. Iranian state media reports said Farzin resigned on Monday, but the protests did not subside. Many businessmen closed their shops in protest of the currency collapse and high inflation rates. General inflation rose 1.8 percent to 42.4 percent in December, but food inflation was dramatically higher, hitting 72 percent last month.
Another cause of the unrest was a report that the government is planning a major tax hike for March, which is the beginning of the new year on the Iranian calendar. The regime reportedly tried suppressing the protests with its usual brute-force tactics, sending militarized police to break up street marches in Tehran with tear gas and batons – but the demonstrators actually drove security forces back with deafening chants of “Shameless! Shameless!”
...The protesters rallied each other with chants of “Have no fear, we are all together” and “Death to the dictator!” as they filled bazaars and shopping centers to protest the high cost of living. The dictator in question would be Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran. (Read More)
