Protests in Iran against the sharply rising cost of living spread to several universities on Tuesday. This is reported by the Reuters news agency. The Iranian government has now reportedly offered to enter into discussions with the demonstrators.
The protests started on Monday among shopkeepers and market vendors, who closed their businesses and took to the streets out of dissatisfaction with the deteriorating economic situation. Police soon used tear gas to disperse demonstrators. In images seen by Reuters, hundreds of people gather in the center of Tehran. According to the news agency, they shouted slogans against the government.
The Iranian currency the rial will lose almost half of its value against the US dollar by 2025. Due to the decline in value, the prices of food and gasoline in Iran, among other things, are rising rapidly, writes the AP news agency. The price of food is 72 percent higher in December than a year earlier. What doesn’t help is that the United States has been imposing heavy economic sanctions on Iran for years.
According to AP, these are the largest protests since the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022. She was a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died after she was roughly arrested by the Iranian moral police because, according to the authorities, she had worn her headscarf incorrectly. After her death, large-scale protests broke out in the country.
The President of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian has via social media announced that he has instructed his interior minister to listen to the “legitimate concerns” of the demonstrators. His government is said to be planning to take monetary and fiscal measures soon to reduce costs for the population.
Protests are very limited in Iran due to the regime’s harsh repression. Previous waves of protests, including over drought, women’s rights and political freedoms, were violently suppressed by authorities and often accompanied by large-scale arrests.
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