TEHRAN, Iran \u2014 Iranian police and plainclothes security officers mobilized Saturday to quell a third straight day of nationwide anti-government demonstrati<\/b>
\nTEHRAN, Iran \u2014 Iranian police and plainclothes security officers mobilized Saturday to quell a third straight day of nationwide anti-government demonstrations that for the first time reached the capital, where the chants among protesters included: \u201cDeath to the dictator!\u201d
The bold reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei \u2014 the all-powerful leader of a theocracy that for 38 years has stage-managed street demonstrations and stifled public expression \u2014 reflected the depth of frustration driving the biggest show of public discontent that Iran has seen in years.
Police on motorcycles broke up an unauthorized gathering of about 200 people at Tehran\u2019s Enghelab Square while authorities in the central city of Shahreh Kord fired tear gas as the government tried to keep the apparently spontaneous demonstrations from gaining momentum.
Witnesses said police detained at least 12 demonstrators and stationed water cannons near Enghelab Square \u2014 Enghelab means \u201crevolution\u201d in Farsi \u2014 after dozens were arrested in other cities Friday. Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazl, cautioned Iranians against taking part in \u201cillegal gatherings.\u201d
At the same time, thousands of pro-government demonstrators took to the streets to commemorate the suppression of the last major street protests in Iran, in 2009, after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The annual rallies had been planned earlier, but the choreographed chants of \u201cDeath to America!\u201d took on added significance as a counterweight to the unauthorized economic protests.
The anti-government demonstrations that began Thursday in Mashhad, Iran\u2019s second-largest city, have now spread to more than 10 cities and appear to be driven by frustration over a stagnant economy, official corruption and soaring prices for eggs and other basic goods.
As the rallies gathered steam, protesters \u2014 most in their 20s and 30s \u2014 also called for the release of political prisoners and chanted against both the hard-line Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate who has failed to deliver on promises of economic and social reform.
Many analysts expected police and the government\u2019s feared Basij volunteer militia to clamp down hard. Ahmad Khatami, a firebrand cleric who is close to the ruling establishment, called on Friday for a heavy-handed crackdown against \u201canarchists who violate the law.\u201d
But the security presence did not deter demonstrators in Enghelab Square, near Tehran University. They chanted, \u201cDeath to this deceitful government,\u201d and \u201cWe will die, we will die, we will take back Iran.\u201d
\u201cPeople ask me what will happen next,\u201d Abbas Abdi, a leader of the 1979 seizure of the U. S. Embassy in Tehran who is now an influential advocate of political reforms, wrote in a newspaper column. \u201cAnd I can say that people can tolerate economic pressure but not humiliation.\u201d
Analysts said one of the anti-government protests had been organized by Ahmadinejad, a populist who sought to highlight Rouhani\u2019s handling of the economy. Another occurred in the western province of Kermanshah, where more than 500 people died in a magnitude 7.3 earthquake last month and victims have accused the government of being slow to deliver relief.
But what began as economic protests quickly revealed broad anger at a ruling establishment that has failed to rein in corruption while funding costly military adventures abroad, including sponsoring Houthi rebels in Yemen and pro-government forces in Syria.
The protesters have not spared Rouhani, who won re-election this year in large part because of his opposition to the hard-line social restrictions backed by Khamenei and his championing of the 2015 nuclear deal that improved relations with the West.
Until now, most of Iran\u2019s pro-reform crowd placed its hopes in Rouhani and the jailed leaders of the Green Movement, which led the mass 2009 protests. The anger against Rouhani and the absence of Green Movement slogans in these demonstrations suggested they were coming from a new and undefined political force.
\u201cAs an activist who participated in many post-2009 protests, now I am skeptical about the motives of these protesters and their targets,\u201d Milad Waseli, a writer and pro-reform activist, said in his shop near Enghelab Square.
\u201cI am surprised. In the past, when we were in a much direr economic situation with even more severe inflation, we did not witness protests like these.\u201d
The government sought to discredit the rallies. A news anchor on state-run television aligned the protesters with President Donald Trump, one of the Iranian government\u2019s loudest critics, who expressed support in a Twitter post late Friday for the \u201cpeaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with regime\u2019s corruption & its squandering of the nation\u2019s wealth to fund terrorism
abroad.\u201d
Trump called on Iran to respect demonstrators\u2019 rights, saying, \u201cThe world is watching!\u201d
The State Department issued a statement urging countries \u201cto publicly support the Iranian people and their demands for basic rights and an end to corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

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