Protests hit multiple Iran cities for first time in weeks

In Iran’s western Kurdish regions, online videos shared by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights showed burning roadblocks in Sanandaj, which has seen repeated demonstrations since Amini’s death.

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Hengaw shared one video that included digitally altered voices shouting: “Death to the Dictator!” That call has been repeatedly heard in the demonstrations, targeting Iran’s 83-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Other videos purportedly shot in Tehran had similar chants, as well as scenes of heavily protected riot police in the street.

Iranian state media did not immediately acknowledge the demonstrations.

Since they began, at least 529 people have been killed in demonstrations, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran. Over 19,700 others have been detained by authorities amid a violent crackdown trying to suppress the dissent. Iran for months has not offered any overall casualty figures, though the government seemed to acknowledge making “tens of thousands” arrests earlier this month.

The demonstrations had appeared to slow in recent weeks, in part due to the executions and crackdown, though protest cries could still be heard at night in some cities.

Forty-day commemorations for the dead are common in Iran and the wider Middle East. But they also can turn into cyclical confrontations between an increasingly disillusioned public and security forces that turn to greater violence to suppress them, as they had in the chaos leading up to Iran’s 1979 revolution.

Iran’s hard-line government has alleged without offering evidence that the demonstrations are a foreign plot, rather than homegrown anger.

The country’s rial currency has collapsed to new lows against the U.S. dollar. Iran continues to enrich uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels after the collapse of its nuclear deal with world powers and has enough of a stockpile to build “several” atomic bombs if it chooses. Meanwhile, Tehran arms Russia with the bomb-carrying drones Moscow has been using in the war in Ukraine.