Protests over fuel price hike in Iran escalate - police officer killed, Khamanei blames foreign-backed 'hooligans'

RT
Sun, 17 Nov 2019 18:04 UTC

© Reuters / WANA / Nazanin Tabatabaee

Riot police tries to disperse people as they protest on a highway against increased gasoline price in Tehran, Iran, on November 16, 2019.

A police officer has died in a hospital after being critically injured during unrest in western Iran. He attempted to defend a city police command that was invaded by an angry mob, local media report.

The incident took place in the city of Kermanshah - a capital of a western Iranian province bordering Iraq - which saw major demonstrations on Saturday. One such rally spiraled into violent clashes between the protesters and the police, and ended up with an armed mob storming the police station.

The officer identified as Major Iraj Javaheri was inside the building and sought to stop the attackers but received a gunshot wound, Police Information Center spokesman, Commander Ali Akbar Javidan, told the local media. He was then rushed to a hospital, but succumbed to his injuries on Sunday night.

The attack on the police station in Kermanshah was not an isolated incident, as the protests sparked by a surprise gasoline price hike apparently grew increasingly violent. A footage obtained by RT Arabic shows a transport police headquarters in the city of Karaj, located just west of Tehran, burning, after it was supposedly stormed by violent protesters.

The video also shows some people hurling stones at the building, with its entrance blocked by boulders and litter. Public outrage was provoked by the government's decision to raise gasoline price from 10,000 rials per liter to 15,000, which translates into about $0.13 a liter, or about $0.50 a gallon. Those who would like to buy more than 60 liters in a month, would also have to pay double price.

The move announced on Thursday was criticized by some Iranian clerics and secular officials and gave rise to demonstrations on Friday. The rallies were initially largely peaceful, but the public anger soon escalated into vandalism and clashes between demonstrators and police.

On Sunday, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei blamed violence during the rallies on criminal and foreign influence, while backing the government's decision. He also confirmed that some people died in the protests. Earlier, the Iranian authorities said that one person was killed in the southeastern city of Sirjan.

Comment: Khamenei said: "Sabotage and arson is done by hooligans not our people. The counter-revolution and Iran's enemies have always supported sabotage and breaches of security and continue to do so," as quoted by state TV. Which is pretty ridiculous. Some or many of the 'hooligans' may in fact be foreign-backed, but to say that sabotage or arson is simply "not done" by "our people" is pure rhetoric. Every society has arsonists and radicals, regardless of foreign support.

Sirjan's acting Governor Mohammad Mahmoudabadi also told journalists that some violent elements within a largely "calm gathering" damaged public property, including fuel stations, sought access to a local oil company's major fuel depots and even set them on fire.

Comment: More protest footage from Twitter:

Rouhani gave the standard response during a cabinet meeting: "Protesting is the people's right, but protesting is different from rioting. We should not allow insecurity in the society." So far, forty people have been detained in Yazd city (no similar numbers for other cities as of yet). The comments from The Duran's Serban Enache are apropos:

I don't know what the hell the Iranian authorities were thinking when they made this move. Subsidies shouldn't be drastically cut, but phased out slowly, while at the same time investing to expand output capacity. Shock therapy will always have pernicious effects. But the major tool the Government operated with was price controls. Price ceilings do not work. Even Maynard Keynes told us that. The Iranian state can go one of two ways, in my opinion. It either adopts military-style rationing measures, or - if it wants a fair market system in which prices are derived from value, not vice-versa - it implements land-value capture.

For the last 18 years, Iran has had a positive current account to GDP ratio, meaning it net saved in foreign currency. After 2018, its consumer price index shot up from below 110 to almost 190. During this year, food inflation spiked to nearly 90 percent, but then came back down swiftly enough to the 30 percent mark. Cost of transportation and utilities shot up as well, and there is no correcting downward trend for these two like for food; the trend remains upwards. The benchmark interest rate in Iran is in the double digits at 18 percent, which means the Government pays more in interest to the private sector. It's not wise to grow demand while you are supply constrained; not to mention the fact that such a high interest rate is a [needless] drag for both firms and households who have debts to service. Rouhani's finance guys should be fired. They've learned nothing from history, including super-recent history [France, Ecuador, Haiti, Chile].

Doubtless, there are foreign-backed elements within the crowds who are seeking regime change. I wrote about such an operation back in September: Deep State MAGA & MIGA [Make Iran Great Again]. But I didn't expect it to be carried out on the heel of such a huge Government blunder. The only way to retain political stability now, I think, is for Khamenei to call for new elections [because this Government is obviously too incompetent to remain in power] and seek emergency aid from Russia and China - hasty deliveries of basic commodities like water, food, and pharmaceuticals. For an oil-rich country like Iran, having to rely on oil price fixing to prevent social unrest [like Egypt subsidizing bread or risking revolution] is humiliating. The Iranian Government telling people they have to pay more for less fuel, otherwise it won't have enough rials [sovereign currency] for the poor is a perfidious lie, and needlessly foments political instability, unrest, and social hardships. Iranian political elites need to take the situation seriously. Stronger states across history have been brought low by such idiotic policies [self-made problems], and not by rival empires or nature's wrath.