Thousands of protesters took to the streets across Iran. Demonstrations began Thursday when hundreds protested against high prices and shouted anti-government slogans Iran’s second-largest city, Mashhad.
The crowds drilled to chant ‘death to America’ went off the script and demanded the end of the Islamic regime instead. Videos show Iranians chanting ‘Death to the dictator’ and ‘Death to Rouhani’.
According to media reports, the protests have now spread to at least eight other cities. “Police forces intervened on Friday to disperse protesters shouting anti-government slogans in Iran’s western city of Kermanshah, a day after similar protests in the country’s northeast,” Reuters reported, quoting Iran’s state-run Fras news agency.
Protesters chant ‘Death to the dictator’ and ‘Death to Rouhani:
The Mullah regime responded to protests by arresting dissidents and using riot police against the demonstrators. Arrests were reported in the Iranian capital Tehran as well. Muslim clerics, the backbone of the regime, urged Tehran crush the dissent before things get out of hand. Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post quoted a senior cleric close to the Iranian government:
A top cleric in Iran’s second largest city of Mashhad called for tough action by security forces after hundreds of people took to the streets to protest against high prices and shouted anti-government slogans, state news agency IRNA said on Friday. (…)Political protests are rare in Iran. But demonstrations are often held by workers over layoffs or non-payment of salaries and people who hold deposits in non-regulated bankrupt financial institutions.”If the security and law enforcement agencies leave the rioters to themselves, enemies will publish films and pictures in their media and say that the Islamic Republic system has lost its revolutionary base in Mashhad,” IRNA quoted prominent conservative cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda as saying.
The Iranian regime is determined to avoid the repeat of the anti-government protests, also known as the Green Revolution, that took place eight years ago. The popular movement began in 2009 when protesters took to the streets demanding the removal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office following a rigged presidential election. Despite massive suppression by the regime, the protests went on for three more years.
Demonstrators chant “Death of freedom” in Kermanshah:
President Obama, busy cementing his ‘legacy’ with a Nuclear Deal with the Iranian regime, refused to show any support for the pro-democracy movement in Iran. He even threw a lifeline the Iranian regime at a time when international sanctions were finally beginning to show results.
As columnist Eli Lake explained, writing for the Bloomberg, “Obama wasn’t just reluctant to show solidarity in 2009, he feared the demonstrations would sabotage his secret outreach to Iran.”
“Obama from the beginning of his presidency tried to turn the country’s ruling clerics from foes to friends,” Lake added.
President Obama’s Nuclear Deal allowed Iran access to assets frozen in the US to the tune of $100 billion. The Obama administration even shipped $1.7 billion in cash to the regime, described as ‘settlement of old legal claim.’
With President Trump in office, those cash payments seem to have stopped. Buoyed by the cash flow thanks to Obama-Kerry Nuclear Deal, regime overstretched itself militarily, funding and manning pro-Iranian militia in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. Tehran even resumed aid to the Gaza-based Islamist terror outfit Hamas — Hezbollah’s estranged evil Sunni twin, patching up ties strained by Iran’s intervention in the Syrian conflict.
Iran’s Mullah, dreaming up plans to wrestle control of the ummah, the worldwide Muslim community, have been woken up to the fragility of their own hold on power. With Obama out of office, Iranian regime will be facing a hostile US administration this time as they go about crushing yet another popular uprising at home.
Raw Video: Iranian Riot Police clamp down on the protesters in the city of Kermanshah:
[Cover image via YouTube]
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