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Iran Holds Annual Pro-Government Rallies After Economic Protests

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About 4,000 people took part in the annual demonstration to mark the end of protests surrounding disputed 2009 presidential elections.
Thousands of pro-government demonstrators rallied in Tehran on Saturday in support of Iran’s leaders, days after unauthorized protests broke out over declining economic conditions in the country.
About 4,000 people took part in the annual demonstration in the capital on Saturday, state media reported. The rally observes the eighth anniversary of nationwide pro-government demonstrations surrounding the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president in 2009.
The results set off eight months of street protests, with three million people pouring into the streets in the first days. Pro-reform groups, including the grass-roots group Green Movement, had said the vote was rigged. But a crackdown led by the Revolutionary Guards’ security forces squelched the demonstrations. Every year since, pro-government rallies have been held.
State television stations on Saturday showed marchers carrying banners in support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city. Typically, pro-government demonstrations are orchestrated by the state, and many of those attending would be bused in.
The marches occurred two days after images on social media showed clashes between security forces and demonstrators during the unauthorized demonstrations, the largest wave of protests since the pro-reform unrest of 2009.
While scattered economic protests have occurred in the past, overtly political protests are rare in Iran, where security services are omnipresent.
The semiofficial Iranian Labor News Agency quoted Mohsen Nasj-Hamedani, Tehran’s deputy governor-general for security affairs, as saying that “a number of protesters” were arrested in Tehran on Friday after “an illegal call” for a rally.
Mr. Hamedani warned that “such gatherings will be firmly dealt with by the police.”
The Revolutionary Guards, which along with its Basij militia spearheaded a crackdown against protesters in 2009, said in a statement carried by state news media on Saturday that there were efforts to repeat that year’s unrest, but warned that Iran “will not allow the country to be hurt.”
Some social media users called for more antigovernment rallies in Tehran and other cities later Saturday.
President Trump tweeted support for the protesters who had turned out in major Iranian cities, saying the government should respect the people’s right to express themselves.
“The world is watching!” Mr. Trump said.
The State Department also expressed support for the protesters. “The United States strongly condemns the arrest of peaceful protesters,” it said in a statement . “We urge all nations to publicly support the Iranian people and their demands for basic rights and an end to corruption.”
At the government-sactioned rally on Saturday, one demonstrator, Ali Ahmadi, 27, blamed the United States for Iran’s economic problems, according to The Associated Press.
“They always say that we are supporting Iranian people, but who should pay the costs?” he said.
President Hassan Rouhani won re-election this year on promises to revitalize an economy hit hard by international sanctions. But the cumulative effect of those sanctions and decades of government mismanagement have taken their toll on the economy. Unemployment among young people, for example, stands at more than 40 percent.
The unauthorized protests began on Thursday in Mashhad, a city of two million in the northeast that is one of the holiest places in Shiite Islam. Iranians there denounced recent price increases in particular and the moribund state of the economy in general, according to local news agencies.
Some shouted “Death to Rouhani.”
Ali Vaez, the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group, said it was possible that hard-line opponents of Mr. Rouhani had been behind the protests in Mashhad, capitalizing on anger about the economic conditions.
“The trigger was apparently a protest that the government’s hard-line opponents organized in Mashhad, which got out of control and turned into an anti-regime rally and is now spreading across the country,” he said.
On Friday, the police dispersed antigovernment demonstrators in the western city of Kermanshah as protests spread to several cities. On Thursday, the police arrested 52 people, according to a judicial official in Mashhad.
State television said rallies were scheduled to be held in more than 1,200 cities and towns on Saturday.

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