Iran’s supreme leader has blamed Donald Trump for the protests, which have left dozens dead after violence erupted.
A new escalation in the protests that have spread nationwide across the Islamic Republic, leading to deadly violence.
Internet access and telephone lines in Iran cut out immediately after the protests began, but some people have managed to get online reportedly using the Starlink satellite.
Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, accused the protesters of ‘ruining their own streets’ to please Donald Trump.
He warned that Tehran would not tolerate people acting as ‘mercenaries for foreigners.’
The protest represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by crown prince and opposition leader Reza Pahlavi, whose fatally ill father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
He pleaded with Trump to intervene, saying Khamenei has ‘threatened the people on the streets with a brutal crack-down. And he wants to use this blackout to murder these young heroes.’
Over 100,000 people were out on the streets on the night of Prince Reza Pahlavi’s public call demonstrating he widespread popularity of the individual whom Iranians call ‘Reza Shah II’.
Demonstrations have included cries in support of the shah, something that could bring a death sentence in the past but now underlines the anger fueling the protests that began over Iran’s ailing economy.
Today and yesterday saw a continuation of the demonstrations that popped up in cities and rural towns across Iran on Wednesday.
More markets and bazaars shut down in support of the protesters. So far, violence around the demonstrations has killed at least 62 people while more than 2,300 others have been detained, said the US based Human Rights Activists News Agency.
The judiciary’s Mizan news agency report a police colonel suffered fatal stab wounds in a town outside of Tehran, while the semiofficial Fars news agency said gunmen killed two security force members and wounded 30 others in a shooting in the city of Lordegan in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province.
A deputy governor in Iran’s Khorasan Razavi province told Iranian state television that an attack at a police station killed five people Wednesday night in Chenaran, some 430 miles northeast of Tehran.
Late Thursday, the Revolutionary Guard said two members of its forces were killed in Kermanshah.
It came despite Iran’s government thinking that it can solve its worst economic crisis since the 1979 revolution – and the resulting protests – with £5 a month.
Most of the country’s 90 million citizens will be given coupons, aimed at offsetting the burden caused by the elimination of a heavily subsidized exchange rate used to import essential goods.
Government spokesperson, Fatameh Mohajerani, said the plan is meant to ‘preserve households’ purchasing power, controlling inflation and ensuring food security.’
Labour minister Ahmad Maydari confirmed that the money would be issued as coupons redeemable for basic commodities, rather than cash transfers, in an effort to limit price pressures.
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