A resurgence of protests against the Iranian regime “should surprise no one,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in his latest denunciation of the government.
“The people of Iran are tired of the corruption, injustice, and incompetence from their leaders,” Pompeo said Wednesday. “The world hears their voice.”
Pompeo’s statement followed an outbreak of protests at the Grand Bazaar in the capital city, Tehran. Merchants closed their shops for the largest protest since 2012, motivated by anger over the rial’s sharp decline in value in the months since President Trump decided to renew economic sanctions on the regime.
“Even in the worst case, I promise that the basic needs of Iranians will be provided,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a Monday evening statement, attempting to assuage the protests. “We have enough sugar, wheat, and cooking oil. We have enough foreign currency to inject into the market.”
Pompeo, who is seeking to isolate the regime through “the strongest sanctions in history,” put the blame for the protests on the foreign policy aggression that motivated the U.S. to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal.
“The Iranian government is squandering its citizens’ resources, whether its adventurism in Syria, its support for [Hezbollah], Hamas, and the Houthis, or its ambitions for wastefully expanding its nuclear program, it will only add to the suffering of the people of Iran,” he said in Wednesday’s statement. “As I have said before, it should surprise no one that protests continue in Iran.”
The latest protests may reveal a new vulnerability in the regime’s leadership. “They have taken place amongst the regime’s hitherto reliable basis of support — the members of the bazaar and the working classes,” Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University, told NPR. “For over a hundred years, strikes in bazaars have been harbingers of change and invariably the clergy were allied with these merchants. Now, the ruling clergy are the subject of the merchants’ wrath.”
Iranian officials are blaming the frustration on western propaganda. “It is our duty to work in coordination and synergy to help the government and other branches overcome economic woes and foil enemy plots for an economic war and psychological warfare,” Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi said Wednesday on PressTV, a state-run media outlet.
