People walk past buildings which burned during protests that followed the rise of gasoline prices, in the city of Karaj, west of Tehran, Iran, Nov. 18, 2019, in a photo released by Iranian Students' News Agency, ISNA."The frequency and persistence of lethal force used against peaceful protesters in these and previous mass protests, as well as the systematic impunity for security forces who kill protesters, raise serious fears that the intentional lethal use of firearms to crush protests has become a matter of state policy," he continued.
In his speech on Sunday, Ayatollah Khamenei specifically mentioned the house of Pahlavi, Iran's former monarch, and a dissident group known as the MEK, as the ones pushing people to the streets in the "cyber space," according to the official website of the leader.
"The internet will gradually be returned to the provinces where it can be guaranteed it is not misused," said Ali Rabiei, a spokesman for Iran's government, according to the Iranian Students News Agency on Tuesday.
(MORE: 40 years after US embassy seizure, Iran’s youth have mixed feelings) Iran's economy faces many challenges, from exporting oil -- the major source of revenue for the country -- to a shrinking job market, high inflation and sinking value of the country's currency as a result of the U.S. decision to reinstate crippling sanctions on the country.
In May 2018, President Donald Trump withdrew from Iran's nuclear deal, known as the Comprehensive Joint Plan of Action. The deal had been signed in 2015, when Barack Obama was president, between Iran and the U.S., U.K., Russia, China, Germany and France. Tehran had agreed to put a cap on its nuclear activities in return for the easing of economic sanctions by the West.
Iranian officials say that the power price rise was a move to compensate for the budget deficit the country faces due to its sanction-hit oil revenue. The Iranian President Hassan Rouhani promised to allocate the income from reducing gasoline subsidies to the vulnerable households that, as he described, make up over 80% of the country's population.
Out of the 25 million Iranian households, 18 million are in difficult conditions, [so] the government has decided to provide them with aid packages," Rouhani said in a speech in Kerman, as reported by IRNA on Nov. 12.
"This is meaningless. I don't know what this tiny amount of money can even mean," a 40-year-old English teacher told ABC News. "I wish the government would get it sooner that people's problems cannot be solved by a 10,000 tomans subsidies increase and cutting the internet."
Kaynak:Abcnews