Riot Police Swarm Anti-Ahmadinejad Protesters in Fury Over Currency
Riot Police Swarm Anti-Ahmadinejad Protesters in Fury Over Currency
Iranian riot police swarmed a major bazaar Wednesday in Tehran as demonstrators launched protests against firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, blaming him for plummeting currency that’s leaving families across the country struggling.
A day after Ahmadinejad acknowledged that his country is taking a hit, and placed the blame largely on “the enemy’s” sanctions, crowds of protesters also took to the streets in another commercial area in the capital, shopkeepers said.
They chanted slogans slamming Ahmadinejad’s regime and complained about the high prices of goods and food. Riot police dispersed the crowd, a shopkeeper said.
The semi-official Mehr news agency reported two European tourists and some “agitators” were arrested by security forces. The Europeans violated Iranian law by gathering information about the protests, it said.
The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, echoed Ahmadinejad’s position Wednesday, saying that growing pressures are mainly aimed at making his country surrender, “but the Iranian nation has and will never surrender to pressures and this has made the enemy furious,” the semi-official FARS news agency reported.