Anti-regime protests spreading across Iran, says country's opposition

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Published October 23, 2017

More than 2,000 Iranians protested the country’s parliament because of plundered savings and corrupt policies.

Ordinary Iranians reportedly took their grievances against the Tehran regime today to the country’s parliament as a result of what they say are the regime’s plundering of their savings and its corrupt policies.

According to a report and video from an Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), there were more than 2,000 people protesting outside the country’s parliament, known as the Majlis. The protesters who were accosted by the police shouted slogans against the regime:

“Shame, shame on the police force!”

“Death to the dictator.”

“Death to the demagogue.”

Upon police arresting female protesters, the crowd, it reported, shouted more antagonistic chants against the regime.

“You are ISIS, you are ISIS, death to ISIS, let them go.”

“Shame on Rouhani.”

“They had a budget deficit, so they took our money,” was another chant, according to the NCRI.

Fox News reported last week that President Donald Trump’s speech on the Iran nuclear deal emboldened protesters after he said that his administration stood in solidarity with ordinary Iranians.

According to various reports, protests started over a financial scandal where thousands of people trusted their lifesavings with government institutions only to lose it or not be allowed to collect on it. The protests started in 2016 but have become increasingly political this year.

Many of the investments are reportedly run or tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which was recently designated through the Department of Treasury for its terrorist activities by Trump.

“I will kill, I will kill the one who killed my brother,” the protesters are reported to have shouted as the police moved into arrest them. Protesters, the NCRI report said, had thrown rocks, wood and other objects at the police.

The report also said that as the police surrounded the protesters they broke through police barriers and were joined by many bystanders, all this as a motorized unit was deployed. The protesters responded, it said, by pelting the police with rocks.

“The courageous chants in today’s demonstrations targeting the heads of the Judiciary and Executive Branch, as well as the suppressive State Security Force and intelligence forces, reflect the Iranian people’s desire for the overthrow of the mullahs’ religious dictatorship,” Maryam Rajavi, the head of the NCRI, said in a statement released today.

In her statement, Rajavi especially called on young Iranians to support their countrymen and women and protest for their rights and expand the protests.

“Institutionalized fraud along with institutionalized murder and belligerence constitute the pillars of the mullahs’ decadent regime. Ali Khamenei and his office hold the strings controlling all the depraved crimes taking place in the country. As long as this regime is in power, there will be no end to the astronomical embezzlement, poverty, unemployment and catastrophic economic conditions,” her statement said.

Protesters also criticized the head of Iran’s judiciary, Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq Amoli Larijani, who was appointed to a 10-year term by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. The protesters called out, according to the NCRI report:

“Larijani is a judge. He is the playmate of the thieves,” they shouted against the country’s regime.

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