Protests sweep Iran despite internet shutdown
Iranian protesters shouted and marched through the streets into Friday morning after a call by the country’s exiled crown prince for demonstrations, despite Iran’s theocracy cutting off the nation from the internet and international telephone calls. Short online videos shared by activists purported to show protesters chanting against Iran’s Government around bonfires as debris littered the streets in the capital, Tehran, and other areas.
Iranian State media broke its silence Friday over the protests, alleging “terrorist agents” of the US and Israel set fires and sparked violence. It also said there were “casualties,” without elaborating. Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a brief address aired by state television, signalled authorities would crack down on demonstrators as an audience shouted: “Death to America!”
Protesters are “ruining their own streets to make the president of another country happy,” Khamenei said, referring to US President Donald Trump. The full scope of the demonstrations couldn’t be immediately determined due to the communications blackout, though it represented yet another escalation in protests that began over Iran’s ailing economy and that has morphed into the most significant challenge to the Government in several years.
The protests have intensified steadily since beginning December 28. The protests also represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
