Clashes between protesters and security forces led to at least seven people being killed in Iran in the past two days, authorities said, as citizens took to the streets to demonstrate against an ailing economy and falling currency.
The fatalities, two on Wednesday and five on Thursday, occurred in four cities, largely home to Iran’s Lur ethnic group.
The latest protests are being touted as the biggest in the country since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered angry nationwide demonstrations. Amini had been detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of the local ‘moral police’.
On Wednesday and Thursday, protests spilled into rural areas from Tehran, with Azna, a city in Iran’s Lorestan province, some 300 kilometers southwest of Tehran, reporting the most intense violence, followed by Lordegan, a city in Iran’s Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province. Videos surfaced online that showed streets ablaze and gunfire echoing in the background, with people shouting: “Shameless!”
A semi-official news agency in the country reported three people had been killed on Wednesday and two others on Thursday. The Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran too confirmed that two people had been killed there, identifying the dead as demonstrators who were killed by police firing. A volunteer with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s Basij force was also reportedly killed in the clashes.
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Iran’s civilian government under reformist President, Masoud Pezeshkian, has been trying to signal it wants to negotiate with protesters. However, Pezeshkian has acknowledged there is not much he can do as Iran’s rial currency has rapidly depreciated, with $1 now costing some 1.4 million rials.
Saeed Pourali, a deputy governor in Lorestan province, said the protests that have occurred “due to economic pressures, inflation and currency fluctuations, and are an expression of livelihood concerns”.
“The voices of citizens must be heard carefully and tactfully, but people must not allow their demands to be strained by profit-seeking individuals,” he said.
Meanwhile, state television separately reported on the arrests of seven people, including five it described as monarchists and two others it said had linked to European-based groups.
In the latest confrontation between Iran and the US, Iran has said it is no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country after US President Donald Trump threatened to dismantle all such nuclear facilities, post his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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