BIn the third major terrorist attack by “Islamic State” (IS) in Iran since 2017, at least 15 people were killed and 40 others injured in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz on Wednesday evening. Despite heightened security across Iran, the assassins entered the Shah Cheragh Mosque, one of the holiest sites for Shiite Muslims in Iran, where they targeted and killed worshipers with their firearms. The IS accused itself of the bloodbath on its news portal Amaq.
State media reported that two attackers had been arrested and a third was on the run. They wrote that the main assassin was not an Iranian citizen, but gave no details. On September 22, 2018, 25 people were killed in an IS attack on a military parade in Ahwaz, and on June 7, 2017, 17 people were killed in a double attack on parliament and the mausoleum of revolutionary leader Khomeini.
Interior Minister Ahmad Wahidi claimed the protests, which have been going on for more than six weeks, have “paved the way” for the terrorists. Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said terrorists and people who interfered in Iran’s internal affairs and claimed to defend human rights would not be allowed to endanger Iran’s security. Iran’s enemies are pursuing a “multifaceted project” to make Iran insecure.
Prosecutors are calling for the death penalty for four demonstrators
Meanwhile, the intensity of the protests has increased again in recent days. The occasion on Wednesday was the 40th day (important in the Islamic world) after the death of Mahsa Jina Amini. Her death in police custody had sparked the protests. On Wednesday, tens of thousands of people gathered at her grave, where they chanted anti-government slogans. Even a large police presence had not prevented the train.
On Wednesday, the entire Tehran bazaar was also closed for the first time. The merchants marched through the narrow bazaar streets shouting anti-government slogans. Clashes broke out in the streets around the bazaar with police using tear gas. The police also used tear gas against a rally by Tehran doctors, whereupon the general secretary of the doctors’ association, Mohammad Razi, resigned in protest.
The prosecutor of Tehran’s Revolutionary Courts announced that charges had been brought against 315 protesters who had been arrested. The death penalty is being demanded against four for leading an armed uprising against state authority. So far, more than 13,500 people have been arrested in connection with the protests, wrote the Iranian human rights organization Hengaw. After three members of the teachers’ association were sentenced to long prison terms on Monday, several thousand teachers heeded their association’s call for a strike, despite the government’s announcement that they would raise salaries.
Meanwhile, a controversial discussion about how to deal with the Internet is taking place at the top of the Islamic Republic. Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali, who heads the Civil Protection Organisation, accused the governments of President Hassan Rouhani, who held office from 2013 to 2021, of being responsible for today’s internal security threats because of their use of social media such as WhatsApp and Instagram would have promoted. They should now be held accountable for this.
Against the resistance of the security organs, business associations are also calling for the filtering and slowing down of the Internet to be ended. However, the security authorities are urging that at least WhatsApp and Instagram should be permanently filtered. The Department of Commerce countered that three million jobs are already at risk from filtering alone. Even the newspaper Resalat, a hardliner, called Internet filtering “ineffective”. Because the young generation knows how to bypass the filters, and the Internet is not the only reason for the protests.
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