Iran's government warns protesters they will 'pay the price' for mass unrest

ISTANBUL — Iran's government on Sunday warned protesters they would pay a heavy price for breaking the law after three days of unrest spread across the country and two demonstrators were killed.

“Those who damage public property and create disorder are accountable before the law and must pay the price,” Interior Minister Abdolrahman Rahman Fazli said Sunday, according to state media.

An official in western Iran also confirmed that two demonstrators had been shot and killed in Lorestan province Saturday night, when mass peaceful protests escalated into attacks on government buildings and confrontations with police.

Habibollah Khojastehpour, the deputy governor of Lorestan, blamed the protesters' deaths on “foreign agents” and Sunni militants he said had infiltrated the area.

“No bullets were shot from police and security forces at the people,” he said on state television Sunday, the Associated Press reported.

Reuters had reported late Saturday that videos on social media showed two men lying on the ground covered with blood. A voice-over said the men had been shot dead by riot police firing on protesters.

The anti-government protests were the largest since a 2009 uprising over disputed election results, and were poised to seriously challenge the administration of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate politician who promised key economic reforms.

The demonstrations began Thursday to oppose rising costs and high unemployment, including a 40 percent jump in the price of eggs. But they swiftly expanded to take on a system many protesters have said is corrupt.

“Down with the dictator!” some demonstrators chanted, as they tore down posters of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in central Tehran. Protesters defied police from Kermanshah in the west to the holy city of Qom in the north and Ahvaz southwest of the capital, according to footage uploaded onto social media. Many of the images could not be confirmed.

Still, the mass protests were an extraordinary display of public dissent, and appeared to catch the government off guard.

The 2009 protests — dubbed the “Green Movement” and led by opposition politicians — were eventually quashed by security forces.

“This is more grass-roots. It’s much more spontaneous, which makes it more unpredictable,” Alex Vatanka, an Iran expert at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said of the current protests.

“Things are not working out economically for ordinary Iranians,” he said. “But the root causes, and the much deeper resentment, go back decades. People do not feel this regime represents them.”

President Trump wrote on Twitter on Saturday that “the entire world understands that the good people of Iran want change.”

“Iran’s people are what their leaders fear the most,” he tweeted.

Earlier in the day, after a prior Trump tweet, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman lashed out at the American president, saying Iran “does not pay attention to the opportunistic claims by U.S. officials,” according to state media.

[The U.S. is on a collision course with Iran in the Middle East ]

Rouhani, a moderate, was elected to a second four-year term in May, pledging that he would continue to open up Iran to the world. But he has so far failed to deliver on promises of a revived economy since the 2015 nuclear deal, which was his signature achievement.

That agreement with the United States and five other world powers curbed Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions. But rampant corruption, problems in the banking sector, and unilateral U.S. sanctions have hindered the country’s economic progress.

[What is the Iran nuclear deal?]

Rouhani released a proposed budget this month that called for slashing cash subsidies to the poor and raising fuel prices — part of an effort to reduce debt and move the economy away from oil exports. The plan also included fees for things such as car registration and an unpopular departure tax, which sparked public debate.

Anger over the budget helped stir the protests, analysts said.

“Since Rouhani entered office, he has managed to inflate expectations with lofty rhetoric but has actually done little to change the reality of life on the ground in Iran,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.

According to an unidentified protester from the western city of Kermanshah, who spoke Friday to the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, “people poured into the streets . . . because they are tired of the rising cost of living.”

The center maintains a wide network of contacts inside Iran. “When we don’t have bread to eat, we are not afraid of anything,” the protester was quoted as saying.

A video purportedly from Tehran that appeared Saturday evening showed demonstrators calling on police to join them.

Iran’s state media largely ignored the demonstrations, painting them as the work of anti-Iranian groups.

“Counterrevolution groups and foreign media are continuing their organized efforts to misuse the people’s economic and livelihood problems and their legitimate demands to provide an opportunity for unlawful gatherings and possibly chaos,” the Associated Press quoted state television as saying late Saturday.

Government media focused coverage on thousands of Iranians who attended pro-government rallies Saturday marking the anniversary of the end of the unrest in 2009. Back then, supporters of reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi challenged the reelection of hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sparking mass protests. Activists and dissidents were beaten and jailed.

On Saturday, Iran’s minister of information and communications technology, Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, took to Twitter to urge the head of the messaging app Telegram to shut down the Iranian Amad News channel, which the minister accused of aiding the protests. Telegram is widely popular among Iranians and even government officials.

“A Telegram channel is encouraging hateful conduct, use of molotov cocktails, armed uprising, and social unrest,” Jahromi said.

Telegram’s director, Pavel Durov, responded that he had ordered the channel shut, citing Telegram’s “no calls for violence” rule. “Be careful — there are lines one shouldn’t cross,” he tweeted.

Taleblu, the analyst, said that the demonstrations “prove that there is widespread discontent in Iran, that it can be triggered at any time.”

“These protests also show that . . . Iranians see the regime and its mismanagement as an impediment to their daily lives,” he said.

But others warned about the effectiveness of demonstrations that lack a cohesive strategy or broader political vision.

“Socio-economic discontent [should not] be equated with effective political resistance,” Mohammad Ali Shabani, editor of Iran coverage at Al-Monitor, an online news site, wrote of the protests. “Without necessary resources . . . change remains a remote prospect.”

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