Wed 27 November 2019:
Iran gave a glimpse on Wednesday into the scale of what may have been the biggest anti-government protests in the 40 year history of the Islamic Republic, with officials saying 200,000 people had taken part and a lawmaker saying 7,000 were arrested.
Iran has given no official death toll for the unrest, but Amnesty International said earlier this week that it had documented the deaths of at least 143 protesters, a total Tehran has said it rejects.
A figure anywhere close to that would make it the deadliest anti-government unrest at least since the authorities put down a “Green Revolution” of election protests in 2009, and probably since the 1979 Islamic Revolution itself.
The violence comes as Iran’s economy has been hit by a tightening U.S. blockade that cut off its oil exports this year, and as mass demonstrations have also erupted in Iraq and Lebanon against governments built around prominent pro-Iran factions.
Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said around 731 banks, 70 petrol stations and 140 government sites had been torched. More than 50 bases used by security forces were attacked, he said, in remarks published by the official IRNA news agency.
According to IRNA, Rahmani Fazli said up to 200,000 people took part nationwide in the unrest. Hossein Naqavi-Hosseini, a member of parliament’s national security committee, said about 7,000 people had been arrested, news website Entekhab reported.
The government said the gasoline price rises of as much as 50% aim to raise around $2.55 billion a year for extra subsidies to 18 million families struggling on low incomes.
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