Iran protests expected to restart next week

Weeks after the Iranian regime crushed massive protest movement, merchants who orchestrated the first wave of demonstrations are calling for dissidents to take to the streets again.

By World Israel News Staff

The nationwide protests that rocked Iran from late December through the first few weeks of January could be resuming next week, more than a month after pro-regime forces carried out a violent crackdown that left thousands – and possibly tens of thousands – of protesters dead.

Merchants at the Grand Bazaar in Tehran have called on shopkeepers across Iran to resume the anti-government protests starting next week, calling on protesters to “avenge” the demonstrators killed during the mass crackdown, which took place from January 8 to 9.

The protests first began in Tehran on December 28, when merchants in the Grand Bazaar shuttered their shops and rallied to vent growing national frustration with the regime, after the rial was devalued again.

The demonstrations quickly spread to other major cities, and later to towns across the country.

The public gatherings peaked on January 8, with protests that reportedly drew millions of participants across the country, including some 1.5 million in Tehran alone.

Following the crackdown, however, there was a sharp decline in both the number of protest events and levels of turnout.

The death toll has been estimated at anywhere from 3,000 – according to the regime – to 40,000, according to some opposition sources, with the Human Rights Activists News Agency thus far confirming 6,961 of the more than 18,000 fatality reports it has received.

While the government has sought to soften the public backlash against the mass killings – announcing the lifting of some social restrictions – the same group of merchants from Tehran’s Grand Bazaar who orchestrated the first wave of protests issued a call last week to restart the demonstrations.

“We invite the noble people of Iran across the country to simultaneously, in their cities, keep the memory of the dead alive and continue the national uprising,” organizers wrote in a Telegram channel used by bazaar workers.

The dissidents called to “avenge the greatest street massacre in contemporary history.”