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Widening Protests Shake Iran 01/05 06:35
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- Widening protests in Iran sparked by the
Islamic Republic's ailing economy are putting new pressure on its theocracy.
Tehran is still reeling from a 12-day war launched by Israel in June that
saw the United States bomb nuclear sites in Iran. Economic pressure, which has
intensified since September when the United Nations reimposed sanctions on the
country over its atomic program, has put Iran's rial currency into a free fall,
now trading at some 1.4 million to $1.
Meanwhile, Iran's self-described "Axis of Resistance" -- a coalition of
countries and militant groups backed by Tehran -- has been decimated in the
years since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.
A threat by U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran that if Tehran
"violently kills peaceful protesters" the U.S. "will come to their rescue," has
taken on new meaning after American troops captured Venezuelan President Nicols
Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran.
We're watching it very closely," Trump told journalists aboard Air Force One
late Sunday. "If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think
they're going to get hit very hard by the United States."
Here's what to know about the protests and the challenges facing Iran's
government.
How widespread the protests are
Demonstrations have reached over 220 locations in 26 of Iran's 31 provinces,
the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported early Monday. The
death toll had reached at least 19 killed, it added, with more than 990
arrests. The group, which relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its
reporting, has been accurate in past unrest.
Understanding the scale of the protests has been difficult. Iranian state
media has provided little information about the demonstrations. Online videos
offer only brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of
gunfire. Journalists in general in Iran also face limits on reporting such as
requiring permission to travel around the country, as well as the threat of
harassment or arrest by authorities.
But the protests do not appear to be stopping, even after Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said "rioters must be put in their place."
Why the demonstrations started
The collapse of the rial has led to a widening economic crisis in Iran.
Prices are up on meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table. The
nation has been struggling with an annual inflation rate of some 40%.
In December, Iran introduced a new pricing tier for its nationally
subsidized gasoline, raising the price of some of the world's cheapest gas and
further pressuring the population. Tehran may seek steeper price increases in
the future, as the government now will review prices every three months.
The protests began first with merchants in Tehran before spreading. While
initially focused on economic issues, the demonstrations soon saw protesters
chanting anti-government statements as well. Anger has been simmering over the
years, particularly after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police
custody that triggered nationwide demonstrations.
Iran's alliances are weakened
Iran's "Axis of Resistance," which grew in prominence in the years after the
2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is reeling.
Israel has crushed Hamas in the devastating war in the Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, has seen its top leadership
killed by Israel and has been struggling since. A lightning offensive in
December 2024 overthrew Iran's longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria,
President Bashar Assad, after years of war there. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi
rebels also have been pounded by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes.
China meanwhile has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, but hasn't
provided overt military support. Neither has Russia, which has relied on
Iranian drones in its war on Ukraine.
The West worries about Iran's nuclear program
Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However,
its officials have increasingly threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran had
been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels prior to the U.S. attack in
June, making it the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program
to do so.
Tehran also increasingly cut back its cooperation with the International
Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, as tensions increased over
its nuclear program in recent years. The IAEA's director-general has warned
Iran could build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its
program.
U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran has yet to begin a
weapons program, but has "undertaken activities that better position it to
produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so."
Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the
country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential
negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. But there's been no
significant talks in the months since the June war.
Why relations between Iran and the US are so tense
Iran decades ago was one of the United States' top allies in the Mideast
under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and
allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the
neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah's
rule.
But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass
demonstrations swelled against his rule. Then came the Islamic Revolution led
by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran's theocratic government.
Later that year, university students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran,
seeking the shah's extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw
diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed.
During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein.
During that conflict, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at
sea as part of the so-called "Tanker War," and later shot down an Iranian
commercial airliner that the U.S. military said it mistook for a warplane.
Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the
years since, and relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran
greatly limit its program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But Trump
unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the
Mideast that intensified after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
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