Police break up anti-govt protest in Iran

DUBAI: Iranian riot police dispersed protesters shouting anti-government slogans in the western city of Kermanshah on Friday, a day after similar protests in the country’s northeast, the semi-official news agency Fars reported.

The outbreak of regional unrest reflects growing discontent over rising prices and alleged corruption, as well as concern over the Islamic Republic’s costly involvement in regional conflicts such as Syria and Iraq. About 300 demonstrators gathered after what Fars called a "call by the anti-revolution" and shouted "political prisoners should be freed" and "freedom or death", while destroying some public property.

Fars did not name any opposition groups. The protests in Kermanshah, the main city in a region where an earthquake killed over 600 people in November, came a day after hundreds rallied in Iran’s second largest city Mashhad to protest against high prices and shout anti-government slogans.

Videos posted on social media showed demonstrators yelling, "The people are begging, the clerics act like God". Police arrested 52 people in Thursday’s protests, Fars quoted a judicial official as saying in Mashhad, one of the holiest places.

In social media footage, riot police used water cannon and tear gas to disperse crowds. Purely political protests are rare in Iran, where security services are omnipresent. The last unrest of national significance occurred in 2009 when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election as president ignited eight months of street protests.

Pro-reform rivals said the vote was rigged. 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. Prominent conservative cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda called earlier for tough action against the protests.

"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," the state news agency IRNA quoted Alamolhoda as saying. Some social media videos showed demonstrators chanting "Death to President Hassan Rouhani" and "Death to the dictator".

Protests were also held in at least two other northeastern cities. Alamolhoda, the representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in northeastern Mashhad, said a few people had taken advantage of Thursday’s protests against rising prices to chant slogans against Iran’s role in regional conflicts.

Tehran backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his country’s civil war, militias in Iraq, Houthi rebels in Yemen and Lebanon’s powerful Hizbullah group. "Some people had came to express their demands, but suddenly, in a crowd of hundreds, a small group that did not exceed 50 shouted deviant and horrendous slogans such as ‘Let go of Palestine’, ‘Not Gaza, not Lebanon, I’d give my life (only) for Iran’," Alamolhoda said.

Social media videos also showed demonstrators chanting "Leave Syria, think about USA, criticising Iran’s military and financial support for Assad. Mohsen Nasj Hamadani, deputy security chief in Tehran province, said on Friday any unauthorised protest would be ‘affirmly dealt with’, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri, a close Rouhani ally, suggested that hardline conservative opponents of the pragmatist president might have triggered the protests. "When a social and political movement is launched on the streets, those who started it will not necessarily be able to control it in the end," IRNA quoted Jahangiri as saying. "Those who are behind such events will burn their own fingers.

They think they will hurt the government by doing so". Rouhani's signature achievement, 2015 deal with world powers that curbed Iran's disputed nuclear program in return for a lifting of most international sanctions, has yet to bring the broad economic benefits the government says are coming.