Iran: Protests continue under the slogan “Fall of the mullah’s regime”

Protests continued in Iran for the third day and spread to Tehran, where crowds confronted police and attacked some government buildings, the social media report said demonstrators were shot dead in a city.

The wave of anti-government protests, partly due to resentment over economic hardship and corruption, is the most serious since the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadi nejad.

Anti-government protests moved to a series of cities and to the capital Tehran for the first time as protesters confronted riot police and stoned them.

Video footage of the social media from the city of Duroud in western Iran showed two young men lying on the floor motionless and heard a voice-over saying riot police shot dead them.

Other protesters chanted in the video, “I will kill anyone who kills my brother!” In previous footage, protesters in Doroud chanted “Death to the dictator” in a reference to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A video on social media showed a scene of protesters turning a car into riot police and burning motorcycles.

Up to 70 students gathered outside Tehran University and threw stones at the police. A videotape of the social media showed the students chanting: “Death to the dictator.”

Video footage later showed riot police beating batons to disperse them and arrest some of them. A group of government supporters also gathered outside the university as police tried to disperse protesters, ISNA news agency said. The agency said the authorities closed two stations close to the metro to prevent the arrival of more protesters.

In Tehran and Karaj, west of the capital, protesters broke windows of government buildings and set off fires in the streets. Photos published by Tasnim News Agency, a semi-official agency, showed burned-out rubbish bins after the protests subsided.

“The situation in the capital is under control,” Brigadier General Ismail Kosari, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s security force in Tehran, and warned the protesters that they would face “the iron fist of the nation” if unrest continued.

Political activists in Iran said Mujtaba, the son of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had fled Tehran by private jet to an unknown destination.

The activists confirmed via Twitter that Mujtaba Khamenei left on board a plane that took off from a military base to an unknown destination.

“The uprising of the Iranian people, which was launched from the north-eastern city of Mashhad and spread in the east and northeast of the country, has swept all parts of Iran from the city of Rasht to the north and to Kermanshah in western Iran,” Mohammad Mohaddin said.

For its part, the Russian Foreign Ministry advised its citizens to stay away from areas where protesters gathered in Iranian cities on Saturday night, while the United States condemned the arrest of dozens of protesters reported by the Iranian media since Thursday.

“The whole world is aware that the good Iranian people want change, and unlike the enormous military power of the United States, the Iranian people are the most feared by their leaders,” US President Donald Trump said in a tweet.

“The Iranian people do not give value to the opportunistic claims of US officials and Mr. Trump,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasimi was quoted as response to a previous tweet.

The application, used by 40 million people in Iran, closed on Saturday a channel accused by the Iranian minister of communications of “inciting violence,” Telegraph’s chief executive, Pavel Durov, said.

Iranian media also reported protests in the cities of Kashan, Arak, Ahwaz, Ziljan, Bandar Abbas and Kerman.

“The Iranian nation … will not allow the country to be affected,” said the Revolutionary Guard. Public political protests are rare in the Islamic Republic where security services are everywhere.

But there is discontent over unemployment, high prices and corruption. The new protests have turned into political protests over issues including Tehran’s involvement in regional conflicts such as the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

The unemployment rate has risen to an annual rate of about 8 percent and the shortage of some food commodities has led to higher prices.

Interior Minister Abdul Ridha Rahmani Fadhli issued a warning against the promotion of protests through social media.

The official IRNA website quoted an unnamed official as saying the body did not send the protests “after concerned parties asked not to be covered on official radio and television.”

The nuclear deal Iran signed with world powers in 2015 to curb its nuclear program in return for lifting most of its international sanctions has yet to bring economic results to the broad base of people the government says will come true. President Hassan Rowhani considers this agreement to be his most important achievement.

Iran’s statistics center says the unemployment rate was 12.4 percent in the current fiscal year, 1.4 percentage points higher than last year. There are about 3.2 million unemployed in Iran, which has a population of 80 million.