Gunfire In Western Iranian City Amid Protests On Sunday

She told German Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag that "Those who beat up women and girls on the street, who abduct, arbitrarily imprison and condemn to death people who want nothing other than to live free -- they stand on the wrong side of history."

Expressing support for protesters she said, "To those people in Iran we say: we stand by you, and will continue to do so," she said.

Antigovernment protests began on September 17 following the murder of Mahsa Amini and soon turned into the biggest challenge to Iran's clerical leaders in years, with protesters calling for the downfall of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Germany, France, Denmark, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic have submitted 16 proposals for new EU sanctions against Iran for its clampdown on protests ignited by the death in hijab policy custody of the 22-year-old Kurdish girl. 

The EU foreign ministers are set to decide on the measures at their meeting on October 17, with no resistance expected from the members of the bloc, Spiegel magazine reported. "We are now working flat out to implement these proposals," a German foreign ministry source said.

Addressing his supporters during a rally in Minden, Nevada, on Saturday, he said that “the people of Iran are bravely protesting against their corrupted and brutal regime, courageously facing down violence, persecution, jail, torture, and even death.” 

He added that “we are with you and we will always be with you.” 

While protests are going on in Iran amid a bloody crackdown by security forces, foreign governments and officials are promising sanctions and punitive measures against the Islamic Republic’s authorities, especially those involved in the suppression of the popular protests. 

Oslo-based organization Iran Human Rights said on Saturday that at least 185 people have been killed in the uprising ignited by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. The NGO added that about 20 of the killed were minors.

The protests first erupted in Mahsa Amini’s hometown Saqqez and capital Tehran and soon spread to all over the country and garnered support from Iranian expatriate communities around the world as well as foreign governments and officials.

The Persian hashtag to express support for the protests has been retweeted over 270 million times and is still being used.

Kowsari who was also a Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) commander in charge of Tehran’s security for many years, said, “If security officials do not fulfill their duties, they should be accountable to their commanders and the people."

The General was the commander of the IRGC’s Sarallah (Sar-Allah) Headquarters in Tehran and currently serves as Tehran’s representative in the parliament. 

Describing the protesters, who have been holding antigovernment rallies since the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, as “rioters,” he said there are some attempts “to weaken” the morale of government forces. 

He also slammed some former government officials who are now critical of the heavy-handed clampdown, claiming that “these people are not aware of the behind-the-scenes issues of the recent riots…They think that statements by foreigners are true and that the security and law enforcement forces have committed crimes.”

Several dissident figures from inside Iran and abroad, such as Canada-based activist Hamed Esmaeilion, Mir-Hossein Mousavi who has been under house arrest since February 2011, and exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi have called the military forces to stand behind the nation.

The Youth of Tehran Neighborhoods is an anonymous group that helped organize rallies in the capital in the past 20 days, and also called for nationwide protests.

The group has so far published eight statements and calls for protests that have led to huge demonstrations in Tehran, such as the rallies on Saturday, October 8, which breathed new life into the movement. 

It said in its latest statement that similar groups have been created in several cities across Iran to organize the protests, which have been held regularly following the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman whose death in hijab police custody ignited the uprising. 

The group warned “the mercenaries of the dictator to stop violence and bloodshed before our patience runs out."

Antigovernment protests in Iran often had no known leaders in the past five years, with all independent groups and political parties banned and disbanded long ago.

The demonstrations in Tehran and several other cities on Saturday were noisy and large, in parallel with protests in many universities.

Several trailers used as police station have been removed from the streets of Tehran Sunday morning after protesters torched a trailer in downtown Tehran during Saturday protests.

Despite curfew-style restrictions on mobile internet service that 90 percent of the population depend on to access social media and the global web, there was sufficient footage of protests that began in universities and secondary schools Saturday morning and spread to streets in the afternoon, lasting well until the early hours of Sunday.

“Hey you, this is not a protest, It’s a revolution,” young protesters are seen chanting to the police in Shahr-e Qods in one of the videos posted on Twitter. The youth also chanted “Down with the Dictator” while older protesters honked their car horns in approval.

Shahr-e Qods is an industrial and agricultural town of around 300,000 about 30km from the capital Tehran. Residents of the town are mainly migrant workers.

In the November 2019 unrest, the area was a bastion of protests. Many government offices, banks, and supermarkets were torched, and many were shot dead by security forces. There were allegations at the time that government agents were responsible for much of the destruction which gave security forces an excuse to suppress the protests with military ammunition.

This is the first time in recent years residents of working-class areas like Shahre-e Qods and Nazi Abad in the south of Tehran, have taken to the streets demanding freedom and revolution. Sources inside Iran say so many protesters had turned out that the riot police had to avoid confrontation with them.

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There have been a lot of unbelievable footage of brutality against protesters by police and security forces including the ever-present plainclothesmen. A video taken Saturday in Mashhad, Iran's second most-populous city, shows several riot police beating up a protester, a “child” according to the narrator.

But there is also a video from Nazi Abad protests in southern Tehran that includes an extremely rare scene of a few riot policemen walking alongside protesters, instead of attacking to disperse them, and apparently guiding them to the middle of the street to keep them away from the sidewalks and shops.

Protesters in the same video are chanting “Mortars, Tanks, Fireworks: Khamenei is a [profanity]”.

Profanities against the Supreme Leader which were only chanted in the worst protest-riot situations in the past are quickly becoming mainstream. Protesters are continuously coming up with new and ingeniously rhyming slogans with even stronger profanities, and this time the angry slogans have spread everywhere, even to universities and schools.

Students at Sharif University of Technology, one of the country’s most prestigious, chanted a slogan of this type against Khamenei on October 3 that quickly became popular among all protesters. “You are ‘dirt and rubble’: You deserve this [profane word],” students at another prestigious university in Isfahan chanted a few days ago while all raising their middle fingers.

This degree of profanity is unprecedented in Iran where four-letter words are normally avoided in most social and even private contexts, particularly in the presence of women and children.

“In our society sexually charged swearwords are only uttered when conflicts are at their highest and most serious levels … One should ask the authorities to explain what they have done to make the other side [people] so angry and uninhibited,” Asr-e Iran, a moderate conservative website said Sunday in a commentary entitled “Why Sexually Explicit Slogans Are Chanted On Streets, Universities, And Schools.”