On the eve of new U.S. sanctions targeting Iran’s oil exports and financial system, thousands of Iranians poured into the streets of Tehran on Sunday to burn American flags and mock President Trump with cardboard effigies and caricatures.
The outpouring of anti-American sentiment, orchestrated by the Iranian government, was a demonstration of how the regime intends to use the latest round of punitive measures to buttress support by channeling resistance to the U.S. In Tehran, supporters of the regime see the new sanctions—the second round of restrictions following Mr. Trump’s withdrawal in May from the Iran nuclear deal—as a direct assault on their livelihoods.
“The harder the sanctions get, the stronger we become,” said Mehdi, a math teacher at an all-boys’ middle school who attended the rally and recalled other tough periods, such as a devastating eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s. “We have no fear of the new sanctions. We will win this war too, just like the Iran-Iraq war.”
Stoking the crowd’s anger from a podium in front of the former U.S. embassy in Tehran, Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, promised that Iran would overcome the sanctions and the U.S.’s “psychological warfare.”
“With God’s help, as well as the resistance of revolutionary believers, this one last weapon of the enemy—economic warfare together with the broad attacks of U.S. media against Iran—will end up in defeat,” Mr. Jafari said, his speech interrupted several times by jeers and anti-U.S. chants. Below him, a banner declared the rally’s theme: “We are far from disgrace.”
Mr. Jafari joined Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in recent days also pledged resistance to U.S. sanctions. But it’s unclear whether the country’s leaders can match that rhetoric with results.
Iran’s economy was already in trouble before the latest sanctions. Inflation hovers around 30%, unemployment is in the double-digits and the local currency is losing value against the dollar at a historic rate.
Ahead of the new U.S. sanctions, which take effect at the stroke of midnight on Sunday in Washington, many of Iran’s biggest oil customers in Asia have scaled back their purchases, compounding the misery.
The Trump administration said it would grant waivers to eight countries allowing them to continue importing Iranian oil and not be penalized by the new sanctions, but they remain under pressure to find other suppliers. Petroleum exports accounted for about half of Iran’s overall exports last year, according to OPEC figures.
Iran holds a rally every Nov. 4 to celebrate the storming of the U.S. embassy 39 years ago by revolutionaries who proceeded to hold 52 Americans hostage there for over a year, precipitating an international crisis.
While it is usually a forum for the regime’s die-hard supporters to vent their anger, the coinciding implementation of sanctions this year made it into a louder outlet for pro-regime supporters, many of them students and members of the Basij volunteer militia.
Addressing Mr. Trump directly, Mr. Jafari, the IRGC commander, warned the president not to threaten Iran with military measures, suggesting any American aggression would be met with the same sort of defeat as a force sent in 1980 to rescue the U.S. embassy hostages. Eight Americans died in that botched mission.
Regime supporters at the rally set fire to large American and Israeli flags, burning chunks of which fell dangerously near people on the packed street. Many held banners or signs denouncing the U.S.
Write to Asa Fitch at asa.fitch@wsj.com
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