Iran protests turn deadly as violence and anger spread

At least one person has been killed in Iran in clashes between protesters and the security forces, Iran’s state-run media and activist groups said Thursday, as the government sought to quell demonstrations fueled by financial woes.

The government identified a man killed in a protest late Wednesday as a 21-year-old member of a militia that works alongside the security forces. A rights group countered that, saying that he had been among the protesters.

Semiofficial news outlets and a rights group described violence and other deaths during a protest in the western city of Lordegan on Thursday, but it was not possible to immediately verify those claims. On Wednesday, protesters threw objects at a government building complex in Fasa, in south-central Iran, and then shook its gates until they opened.

President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday said the Iranian government urgently needed to address people’s concerns.

“According to God’s Quran, if we do not solve people’s problems, we will have a place in hell,” he said in an interview with a local television station during a visit to southwestern Iran.

Protests have broken out across the Iranian capital, Tehran, and other cities this week as high inflation and a currency collapse have roiled the economy and impoverished many Iranians. On Thursday, the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported on Telegram that Iranian authorities arrested 30 individuals for “disrupting public order” in the Malard county, west of Tehran.

The protests are now into their fifth day. While the early protesters were mostly merchants and university students in major Iranian cities, more recent demonstrations have been held in smaller cities in the country’s west.

On Thursday, the Tasnim news agency cited Kazem Nazari, the public prosecutor of Kuhdasht County, as saying that some protesters chanted “subversive slogans” and committed acts of “sabotage,” including throwing stones at the security forces during a demonstration the day before.

Thirteen officers were injured, Nazari said, and one member of the Basij, a militia that works with Iran’s security forces, died after sustaining “severe injuries.”

In a report, the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, a Kurdish rights group, said government forces had shot the man while he was protesting and he had died after being taken to a hospital.

Neither of those claims could be verified.

Iran’s government has responded violently to waves of protests in recent years, arresting and even killing demonstrators. This time, government leaders have called for dialogue with protest leaders and others.

Much of the country was shut down Wednesday. The government attributed the closure to cold weather. Some analysts suggested it also sought to prevent protests.

During a visit to Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province in southwestern Iran on Thursday, Pezeshkian said the government had to find ways to help people.

“If people are dissatisfied, we are to blame,” he said, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. “Do not look for America or anyone else to blame. We must serve properly so that people are satisfied with us.”

His tone of national responsibility contrasted with statements by other prominent officials, who have cast blame on unknown “enemies,” usually understood to mean the United States and Israel.

Iran’s economy has struggled because of strict Western sanctions and a 12-day war last year during which Israel and the United States bombed its nuclear facilities.