Protests, Strikes Continue On Raisi’s Election Victory Anniversary

In a tweet on Friday, Malley applauded “the work of UN experts, including the Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran, in calling attention to the continued crackdown against civil society in Iran.”

During the past few days, the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres as well as a group of UN human rights experts have expressed serious concerns about the violent clampdown by the Islamic Republic. 

Guterres submitted an interim report to the Human Rights Council depicting the grim human rights situation in Iran on Thursday, a day after rights experts issued a statement urging those responsible for using excessive force to be held to account through comprehensive and independent investigations.

The UN chief urged the Iranian government to abolish the death penalty, release all persons detained arbitrarily immediately, and set up investigations into the use of excessive and lethal force during protests.

The UN human rights experts said, “We are alarmed at the recent escalation of allegedly arbitrary arrests of teachers, labor rights defenders and union leaders, lawyers, human rights defenders and other civil society actors.”

On Thursday, the US State Department also hailed the UN experts, and said their concerns are "certainly the concern of ours,” adding, “This is why we condemned the use of violence against these peaceful protesters. We made the point that we support the right of these protesters to peacefully exercise their fundamental freedoms."

The teachers held a gathering in Karaj, near the capital Tehran on Thursday and chanted slogans against the government, and called for the release of their colleagues arrested in previous rounds of protests. 

More than 20 people were reportedly arrested on the eve of the protests in Kurdish majority provinces in western Iran.

In Tehran, sporadic protest rallies were reported but security forces and special units were present in front of the parliament building in large numbers to prevent the demonstrations. 

The situation was the same in Mashhad in northeastern Iran, where security forces cordoned off the areas where a gathering were planned.

Numerous pictures of teachers' gatherings in the cities of Sari, Zanjan, Shahrekord, Ardabil, Khorramabad, Malayer, Marivan, Sanandaj, Kermanshah, Andimeshk, Hamedan, Kashmar, and Bandar Abbas have been published in social media.

Teachers have been holding frequent protests for nearly a year, but the political situation in Iran has worsened in recent months, with rising food prices and a growing perception of government inefficiency and corruption.

Four years of deep economic crisis in Iran following the introduction of United States ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions in 2018 has led to a sharp increase in living costs and labor unrest.

People from different walks of life, including nurses, firefighters, and even judiciary department employees and prison guards, have held protest rallies or strikes to demand higher salaries.

Retirees who have been demonstrating for weeks led most of the protests to the government’s political and economic policies, which have led to runaway inflation.

In Tehran, a group of quasi-state bank retirees rallied to demand higher pensions, in par with former employees of government banks. In Ahvaz, the capital of the oil-rich Khuzestan province retirees gathered outside the provincial governor’s office, demanding higher pensions. They chanted slogans against President Ebrahim Raisi calling him a liar.

Iran’s economic crisis and inflation have worsened considerably since Raisi was elected one year ago with lofty promises of defying United States economic sanctions and improving people’s living conditions.

The Iranian currency has fallen by 25 percent just since March, hitting a historic low of 333,000 rials against the US dollar, fueling further inflation. The people who waited to see if a united hardliner government and parliament can reach a nuclear agreement with the United States and lift sanctions, seem to have run out of patience.

Retirees protesting in Ahvaz

Retail merchants who began strikes and protests on Sunday, June 12, continued to defy the government and keep their businesses closed in many cities on Wednesday, protesting a rapid rise in prices.

The government scrapped food import subsidies in early May, which triggered an instant jump in prices of bread and other necessities. Retailers began protesting the unsettled conditions and new taxes on small businesses amid a large government budget deficit. The exact figure of the deficit is obscured, but it is generally estimated to be more than 50 percent.

Iran’s government has always relied on oil exports as the main source for financing its budget, but four years of US sanctions have depleted its resources to finance operations, while large appropriations for the military and ideological entities have increased.

Iran International received reports and images Wednesday showing some retail businesses on strike in Shiraz, southern Iran. Merchants in Ilam in Western Iran have also gone on strike against increased taxes.

The council of teachers’ trade unions also renewed its demand to release 18 educators arrested during repeated protests in recent months. The council last week called for nationwide protests for Thursday, June 16.

But what is ominous for the government are signs of other groups pledging support to the protesting teachers. A non-governmental council representing oil industry contract workers and a group representing university students called for support for the teachers’ scheduled protest on Wednesday.

“We will fight, we will die, but achieve our rights,” was one of the slogans chanted by protesters in Ahvaz.

The pace of events led many to believe that Abdolmaleki was told to resign under pressure from the media and the parliament as weeks of protests of protests by pensioners and teachers across the country threatened political stability.

Some of the government's critics including reformist commentator Abbas Abdi wrote a June 14 tweet that "Removing Abdolmaleki from his post was a positive step by Raisi and his move should be supported."

For months, politicians, experts and many in parliament were asking Raisi to fire some of his ministers who seemed too weak to deal with a worsening economic crisis.

Like many other Raisi ministers and aides, Mohammad Hadi Zahedi Vafa the caretaker who is likely to be introduced to the parliament as the Minister of Labor is also a graduate of the ideologically notorious Imam Sadeq University and a member of ultraconservative Paydari Party. He is also close to Raisi's adviser Saeed Jalili, an unwavering Shiite ideologue.

In terms of his ideological and political loyalties Zahedi does not bring any change of direction to the ministry, beyond some tweaking with pension and salary numbers. The crux of the matter is that the government is not able to control inflation and people’s incomes have shrunk by more than 25 percent just since March.

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Until Tuesday morning, Zahedi was a deputy to Vice President Mohammad Mokhber, coordinating economic supervision and infrastructure affairs. When Raisi was first introducing his ministers to parliament last September, Zahedi was Mokhber’s and Jalili's choice for the minister of economy, but Raisi appointed Ehsan Khandouzi.

He was also a candidate for the chairmanship of Iran's government owned Central Insurance Company, but again he did not get the job. At the time, Zahedi was working at the Center for the Iranian-Islamic Model for Progress. The center's mission based on an order issued by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is to make Iran the epicenter of Islamic civilization by 2065.

The Labor Ministry will remain under the control of Paydari Party and the Imam Sadeq Alumni gang. Zahedi, 59, studied at Imam Sadeq University in the field of Islamic Knowledge. He went to Canada in 2001 where he received a Ph.D. in economics from Ottawa University and dedicated his dissertation to Prophet Mohammed’s daughter Zahra. 

Immediately after returning from Canada, he was appointed as dean of the faculties of Islamic Knowledge and Economics at Imam Sadeq University and kept the position until 2015. According to records filed at the Center for the Iranian-Islamic Model for Progress, he speaks English and Arabic.

Zahedi was a deputy minister of economy under President Ahmadinejad from 2005 to 2009 but there are no records of his activities in the government after 2009. There are references that he was an aide to Jalili at the Supreme Council of National Security and a member of the nuclear negotiating team. Meanwhile he supported Jalili in the 2013 presidential election and wrote his economic plan.

Following Abdolmaleki's resignation and Zahedi's appointment, Abdolhossein Rouholamini, a lawmaker for Tehran said that at least another two or three ministers should resign before they are fired or impeached, so that the government and the parliament could focus on dealing with the current economic crisis.

Meanwhile, pensioners have kept on their rallies and teachers are set to join a new round of nationwide protests.

On Monday, merchants in the city of Kazeroun in the southern province of Fars refused to open their shops joining a growing strike movement by merchants in the provincial capital Shiraz as well as Tehran and Arak who kept their shops and the bazaar closed for the second day in a row.

The protest by shop owners in Tehran also expanded when merchants in the old Lalehzar shopping district, a hub for businesses related to lights and electric devices, also kept their businesses closed on Monday, and held protest rallies against rising taxes and a falling national currency, as the rial hit an all-time low against the US dollar over the weekend.

Amid runaway inflation and economic chaos, one US dollar surpassed 333,000 rials on Sunday. This represents a more than 25-percent decline since late March and a 10-fold drop since 2017.

According to videos published on social media, security forces clashed with the protesters on the Lalehzar street, beating them and seizing their cellphones.

Earlier in the day, the spokesman of parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Mahmoud Abbaszadeh-Meshkini, said the legislature is considering an amendment aimed at easing regulations for security forces and plainclothes agents to use firearms against illegal gatherings.

Although the Iranian constitution allows unarmed peaceful protests without insulting Islam, in practice no group or individual can get a permit for a gathering critical of government policies or officials. Pro-government rallies, on the other hand, are allowed to take place without interference.

Describing the new amendments as a well-calculated move, he said, "Over time, some acts of violence may emerge in our society, which is why it was so necessary to amend this law.”

Meshkini’s remarks were echoed Monday by Iran’s Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, who said, "Recently, there have been attacks on our police forces, which are not acceptable at all.”

Last week, the government handed a draft bill to parliament to ease the use of firearms by different security forces against civilians amid recurring protests.

On Sunday, protesting shop owners in various cities such as Esfahan and Shiraz chanted slogans against government corruption and mismanagement, threatening to intensify their protests, while criticism of the government's economic and foreign policies intensified in the media.

Bazaar or traditional retail market strikes have a deep historical root in Iran and signal a serious political and economic crisis. The bazaar strikes played a major role both in the Constitutional Revolution of the early 20th century and the 1979 revolution against the monarchy.

The Sunday strikes and protests took place on the backdrop of a series of demonstrations and marches since early May when the government scrapped a food import subsidy.

The Coordination Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations issued a statement recently announcing the next round of nationwide protests slated for Thursday, calling on teachers all over the country to take to streets and demand their legal rights.

Iran has experienced intermittent large and small protests since 2017, but the political situation has worsened in recent months, with a growing sense that social chaos and political insurrection might ensue.