Night of protests rock Iran

PARIS, France (AFP) — Iranians staged their biggest protests yet of an almost two week movement sparked by anger over the rising cost of living, chanting slogans including “death to the dictator” and setting fire to official buildings, videos showed Friday.

Internet monitor Netblocks said authorities had imposed a total connectivity blackout late Thursday and added early Friday that the country has “now been offline for 12 hours... in an attempt to suppress sweeping protests.”

The son of the shah of Iran ousted by the 1979 Islamic Revolution, United States-based Reza Pahlavi, who had called for major protests Thursday, meanwhile urged a new show of force in the streets on Friday.

Agence France-Presse verified videos of crowds of people, as well as vehicles honking in support, filling a part of the vast Ayatollah Kashani Boulevard late on Friday.

The crowd could be heard chanting “death to the dictator” in reference to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has ruled the Islamic republic since 1989.

Other videos showed significant protests in other cities, including Tabriz in the north and the holy city of Mashhad in the east as well as the Kurdish-populated west of the country, including the regional hub Kermanshah.

Several videos said protesters had set fire to the entrance to the regional branch of state television in the central city of Isfahan. It was not immediately possible to verify the images.

Flames were also seen in the governor’s building in Shazand, the capital of the Markazi province in central Iran after protesters gathered outside, other videos showed.

The protests late Friday were the biggest in Iran since 2022 to 2023 rallies nationwide sparked by the custody death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic republic’s strict dress code.

Rights groups have accused authorities of firing on protesters in the current demonstrations, killing dozens. However the latest videos from Tehran did not show intervention by security forces.

Pahlavi, in a new video message early Friday, said Thursday’s rallies showed how “a massive crowd forces the repressive forces to retreat.”

He called for new protests later Friday “to make the crowd even larger so that the regime’s repressive power becomes even weaker.”