Iranian Government Suppresses Protests

Protests in Iran erupted after the government announced a sudden fuel price hike on November 15 that only added to the economic woes plaguing Iran since President Trump’s May 2018 withdrawal from the landmark Iran nuclear deal and the ensuing reimposition of sanctions. According to S&P Global Platts, whereas Tehran once exported 2 million barrels of oil daily, it exported only 500,000 barrels a day in October. The sanctions have considerably damaged the Iranian economy The International Monetary Fund projects that the Iranian economy will shrink by 9.5 percent, and the Iranian government projects a 42 percent increase in the inflation rate. The Iranian government’s overnight subsidy cuts shot fuel prices up by 50 percent overnight, upsetting many citizens. Davoud, an architect in his thirties, who declined to provide his full name, said to the Caravel: “The people’s rage is escalating. They feel like the government treats them like children and no one is willing to stand up to protect them. [The government] didn’t even bother to mentally prepare the public before the decision.”

For Iranian citizens, the plan led to immediate impacts across the country. According to Davoud, his city faced an immediate shortage of cooking gas and witnessed a sharp decrease in visiting farmers due to higher fuel costs. Sara, a marketing specialist who also withheld her full name, said, “The real impact of all of this is still on its way. I could already visibly see the decline in people’s standard of living, on the buses and on the subway, I cannot fathom what might happen next.”

Less than a day after the protests began, the Iranian government shut down the Internet, reducing Iran’s connectivity to the outside world to just 4 percent of normal levels. “Shutting down communications over the internet is a systematic assault on the right to freedom of expression and suggests that the authorities have something to hide. Iranian authorities must immediately lift all restrictions on access to the internet and social media to allow people to share information and freely express their opinions,” said Amnesty International’s Philip Luther to Vox. The Iranian government’s internet and telecommunications blackout intends to impede its 80 million citizens from sharing images and videos of the deadly force being used by security forces. 

Around the same time as the internet blackout, Iran’s interior minister swore that authorities would stop showing “tolerance” and “self-control,” in spite of the reports of protestor casualties. On November 17, Ayatollah Khameini directed security forces to “implement their duties” to end the protests. In the first two days of the protests, over a thousand protestors were arrested. On November 18, Amnesty International reported that hundreds of protestors had died and over three thousand protestors had been injured. Reporters on the ground hint that the reality may be even worse than Amnesty International’s numbers suggest: the Iranian government has been shooting down protestors and collecting the dead bodies to hide the true number of mortalities. Iran International reports that security agents have asked the families of those killed in the Iran Protests to pay 40 million tomans, or $9,400, to the government in order to receive the bodies of their loved ones. 

As of November 23, the protests are slowly beginning to subside, and national internet connectivity has increased to 22 percent. Despite this decline in unrest, senior Iranian authorities have made harsh threats against protestors, including sentencing protest leaders to execution. Security forces have begun transferring several injured protestors from the hospital to prison. The Iranian government declared victory over the protestors, but Davoud questions the nature of this victory. As he put it, “the government wants to torture us so that we submit and accept their conditions.”