Merchants Continue Strikes In Tehran And Other Iranian Cities

Videos surfaced in social media on Sunday showing security forces beating the striking shopkeepers and breaking shop windows in Tehran while footage from other cities such as Esfahan, Shiraz, and Arak show merchants rallying in protest to the sharp and irregular rise in taxes for private businesses.

Earlier in the day, crowds in Tehran gathered outside the city’s power distribution company’s office in eastern Tehran to protest regular blackouts, which have increased in recent weeks as summer heat begins and air-conditioning use increases pushing consumption to a peak. The country faces a deficit of about 14,000 megawatts in electricity production.

The protesting shop owners in various cities chanted slogans against the government and corruption and mismanagement by the authorities, threatening to intensify their protests. Iran’s rial is hitting new lows against the US dollar daily amid runaway inflation and economic chaos, with one US dollar surpassing 333,000 rials on Sunday. This represents a more than 25-percent decline since late March and a 10-fold drop since 2017. ()

Bazaar or traditional retail market strikes have a deep historical root in Iran and signal a serious political and economic crisis. The bazaar strikes played a major roleboth in the Constitutional Revolution of the early 20th century and the 1979 revolution against the monarchy.

In the central city of Esfahan, people mostly pensioners, chanted “Death to Russia” and "The Russian Embassy Is the Den of Espionage," alluding to a phrase used by the former Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini and other Islamic Republic officials to refer to the former US embassy.

In the southwestern city of Shiraz in Fars province, security forces arrested pensioners who planned to hold their protest outside the office of Shiraz Friday prayer imam, who is the Supreme Leader’s representative in the province.

Videos of the pensioners’ protest in Shiraz shows people chanting slogans in support of the Pahlavi dynasty that ruled the country before the Islamic Revolution, saying “God Bless Your Soul Reza Shah” the father of the last shah of Iran who reigned until he was forced to abdicate by the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941 and the grandfather of the exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi living in the United States.

The Sunday strikes and protests took place on the backdrop a series of demonstrations and marches since early May when the government scrapped a food import subsidy. Retirees and teachers in particular have organized to demand higher pensions and wages as incomes fast lose their purchasing power.

A workers’ trade union said that security forces attacked a gathering of retirees in front of the Planning and Budget Organization in Tehran and arrested several, using force to disperse others.

The Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations issued a statement recently announcing the next round of nationwide protestsslated for Thursday, calling on teachers all over the country to take to streets and demand their legal rights.

Teachers have been often holding protests for nearly a year, but the political situation in Iran has worsened in recent months, with a growing sense that social chaos and political insurrection might ensue.

Some media outlets say the Speaker of parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has welcomed the draft bill.

Iranian media say, "the bill aims to ease the use of firearms against illegal gatherings." This comes while Iranian security forces did not shy away to shoot unarmed protesters, killing as many as 1,500 people in 2019. They widely used shotguns in later protest gatherings in Isfahan and Khuzestan provinces often shooting protesters in the head or chest during the past year.

According to Rouydad24 news website, "The Iranian armed forces have always had the permission to shoot protesters in illegal gatherings, but the new bill changed the phrase 'the officers of the armed forces' to 'armed officers,' given permission to more individuals to carry and use firearms."

The draft legislation has been introduced on the same day when Iranian media revealed that a hijab enforcement officer shot a man in a Tehran park four times a few weeks ago after they harassed his wife for not covering her head properly. The coincidence alarmed Iran's civil society which is active mainly on social media.

Iranian journalist Hedie Kimiaee wrote in a post on June 11: "Based on the new [draft] bill those who are shot at by the security officers can no longer file complaints against the officers. On the other hand, anyone who is issued a gun by the government is now officially a security officer."

The existing bill about using firearms allows officers to shoot when there is an armed struggle or a riot in which armed individuals take part, but the draft bill applies categorically to any gathering, since all it takes is for the government to claim that protesters were armed.

The report in Rouydad24 said that those who prepared the draft have deliberately ignored the fact that this bill can be taken advantage of, and that its implementation can have grave consequences.

Recently, lawmaker Ahmad Naderi warned that this year the government may have to face protest gatherings and riots more widespread than the 2019. He added that confronting such riots could lead to catastrophe.

Meanwhile, another lawmaker Ghasem Saedi warned that there is a limit to people's patience. Failing to manage the next protests might lead to events more serious than what happened between 2017 and 2019."

The report added that since 1995, the government has never assumed any responsibility for people being shot during protest gatherings. Plainclothes officers have been observed beating the people during previous protests, the concern now is that they can now use firearms.

On the other hand, both Rouydad24 and Didban Iran new websites expressed concern that the new bill applies to "illegal protests." Islamic Republic authorities have never accepted any gathering as lawful unless they are in support of the government.

The media also opined that the new bill could be one of the outcomes of appointing IRGC officers as local governors in some two dozen Iranian provinces. These commanders look at any gathering from a security perspective.

Didban Iran also opined that the new bill could be an initiative to stop legal complaints against law enforcement officers.

The deputy commander of the Iranian police, Brigadier-General Ghasem Rezaei, made the announcement during a ceremony where some of the equipment was handed over to special units, including 527 vehicles and motorcycles.

Rezaei said that the new equipment and vehicles will help the operational units better execute their missions and is aimed at "strengthening the security of the country." 

In addition to enhancing operational mobility, some of the new equipment provides police forces with “self-protection” during missions, he added. 

Iran has tens of thousands of special police and security units that are often deployed to break up antigovernmental protests that have become more frequent since 2017.

In November 2019, when a sudden government price increase for fuel was announced and nationwide demonstrations began, these security forces were ordered to shoot unarmed protesters, killing at least 1,500 people in a matter of a few days.

Last year, special forces were used in two provinces to quell protests during which more than ten people were killed and hundreds wounded.

Following reports that the social media giant might be aiding the Iranian government amid a wave of protests, three Republican lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees have launched a probe into the matter, a copy of which was published by the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday.

Representatives Jim Banks (Ind.), Claudia Tenney (N.Y.), and Joe Wilson (S.C.) want information about what steps Meta has "taken to confront infiltration by proponents of the Islamic Republic of Iran" that resulted in deleting and censoring accounts tied to anti-regime activists.

They also urged Meta to investigate claims that Instagram, the video sharing app owned by the company, has "been infiltrated by those sympathetic to the Islamic Republic in Iran."

The probe comes following reports alleging that Instagram content moderators are deleting and censoring accounts that have documented the regime’s human rights abuses during the latest wave of protests, including content showing Iranian security forces beating protesters and firing tear gas into crowds.

The lawmakers say Meta helping the Iranian government censor such content represents "an unacceptable threat to their privacy, liberty, and our national security."

BBC’s sources alleged that pro-regime employees of the German branch of Telus International, a Canadian contractor which provides content moderation to Instagram with over 400 Iranian employees for reviewing Persian-language content, are responsible for restricting anti-government content of Iranian users.

Videos and reports published on social media show hundreds of retired protesters marching in Ahvaz, capital of the oil-rich Khuzestan province, in Ilam, Qazvin, the port of Bandar Abbas, Esfahan in central Iran, Mashhad in the northeast and other towns and cities.

Retirees who depend on monthly payments from the Social Security Organization say their pensions have increased at a much slower rate than current inflation and they simply cannot make ends meet.

In most cities protesters were chanting slogans against the government calling it a cheat and a liar. They also repeated the chant, “Death to Raisi” that has been ringing out in other protests since early May.

Just a few days ago the government announced that pensions for most retirees will increase by just 10 percent, while the official inflation rate is at least 40 percent.

At the same time videos show the bazaar in the northwestern city of Tabriz was on strike on Tuesday with merchants shutting down their stores and businesses in protest to a sudden increase in sales tax.

Bazaar or traditional retail market strikes have a deep historical root in Iran and signal a serios political and economic crisis. The bazaar strikes played a major role both in the Constitutional Revolution of the early 20th century and the 1979 revolution against the monarchy.

Tabriz was the scene of another remarkable event on Monday when a few hundred marching retirees reached a police cordon in a street, hesitated for a moment, and then kept on marching, breaking through the police lines. Security forces did not react as they were overwhelmed.

Since early May when the government of President Ebrahim Raisi stopped a food import subsidy and prices soared, Iran has witnessed protests and instability.

The subsidy started in 2018 when former President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear agreement and began imposing tough sanctions on Iran. Two months before his decision, the Iranian currency had already begun to fall against the US dollar making imported food and other necessities more expensive for consumers. The government decided to provide import subsidies to prevent political discontent, but it eventually decided that the scheme was too expensive and scrapped it.

According to widely varying figures, the subsidy annually cost the state anywhere between $9 to $15 billion, while US sanctions have reduced its main source of income, oil exports.

The Iranian currency reached as low as 320,000 rials for one US dollar on Tuesday, falling by more than 25 percent in two months and almost tenfold in four years.

This immediately translates into higher prices for food, as more than half of Iran’s wheat and most of its animal feed are imported from other countries, amid high global inflation.