Iranian Foreign Minister Makes Rare Visit To UAE TO Pay Respects

US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said in a tweet on Sunday, “We support their rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression online and offline -- without fear of violence and reprisal”. “Brave Iranian protestors are standing up for their rights”.

This is the first official reaction by the Biden Administration to the ongoing protests in several Iranian cities, triggered by a sudden hike in food prices. But the unrest has quickly turned into anti-Islamic Republic protests with people chanting slogans against top government leaders.

Sunday night, people were heard chanting “Death to Raisi”, “Death to Khamenei”, as some gunshots were heard in Shahre Kord, the center of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari provinc. Some reports said that security forces directly fired at demonstrators. So far, five deaths have been reported in more than a week of protests. Security forces also use batons and tear gas against protesters.

Many citizens have also been detained but there is no total number reported by reliable sources. Many younger people are among the detainees and some reports speak of security forces arresting whole families if some members were identified during protests.

Head of Tehran's Chamber of Commerce's Exports Committee Razi Haji Aghamiri told ILNA on Sunday that unprofessional measures by the trade authorities have decreased the exports to such a low point that practically there is nothing left of this business.

He described the restrictions by Iran’s Central Bank for the revenues of carpet exports as the “coup de grâce” to the sector, but the sharp drop in exports seems to be more related to the US sanctions.

Data from the Trade Ministry show that the export of traditional Iranian hand-woven carpets in 2001, when nuclear sanctions against Iran had not yet been imposed, was more than half a billion dollars, over a quarter of which was imported by the United States, with Germany, Lebanon, and Britain as other major customers.

The exports picked up again in 2017, immediately after the implementation of Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), reaching about $426 million. But the figure started to fall again after the US withdrawal from the deal in 2018 when Washington reimposed sanctions on the import of Iranian rugs. Importing Iranian carpet to the United States is forbidden even through a third country.

In August 2018, Fereshteh Dastpak, the head of Iran's National Carpet Center at the time, claimed that the value of the hand-woven carpet exports amounted to $1.2 billion annually over the past decade.

An opposition candidate and two Hezbollah officials confirmed the result, citing preliminary results.

Two Hezbollah officials said Elias Jradi, an eye doctor running on the opposition-backed "Together Towards Change" list, won an Orthodox Christian seat previously held by Assaad Hardan of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party, a close Hezbollah ally who has been an MP since 1992.

Jradi told Reuters his list had secured enough votes to win one seat, an opposition breakthrough in an area dominated by the Iran-backed group and its allies, but would not confirm it would go to him before results were finalized.

Shi'ite Muslim Hezbollah and its allies are expected to retain control of the remaining 10 seats in the district, the Hezbollah officials said.

The election for the 128-member parliament is the first since Lebanon collapsed into economic crisis in 2019. Results are expected to emerge through the night.

Opposition candidates are mainly from leaders of protests that rocked Lebanon in 2019, aimed at a political elite that has controlled politics in the small but strategic country for decades, eventually leading the economy into disintegration. Hezbollah has dominated the sectarian political landscape in the past decade.

Hezbollah and its allies won a majority in 2018.

Veria Ghafouri, the captain of Tehran's Esteghlal football (soccer) club, said on the sidelines of a match against Foulad club on Saturday that “It is the right of the Iranian people to live a happy life".

The national team player, who has time and again spoken out against the government and in support of people protesting social and economic issues, added, "I do not know, are the officials not ashamed to see this situation?"

Ghafouri said that when it comes to social and civic issues, football is no longer his priority, and he uses his position to express the demands of his fans.

Following days of unrest across Iran, the match between Esteghlal and Foulad was held without spectators in Ahvaz, the provincial capital of Khuzestan that was the hotbed of the protests which then spread to several other cities.

Other celebrities are also reacting to the protests and the clamp down by security forces.

Iranian actor Ali Nassirian tacitly criticized the current situation of the country during a ceremony at Tehran’s City Theater on Saturday night, saying that holding such celebrations is beyond the people’s patience and spirit. "In such circumstances, we should not celebrate when our people are not in a good mood, we could talk instead of playing music," he added.

Iranian dissident director Jafar Panahi recently said violence is the solution of despots, describing the poverty in Iran as a result of “incompetent rulers”.

Brigadier General Mehdi Hajian said in a press conference on Sunday that 3.3 million liters of vegetable oil, over 5.3 tons of wheat and flour, 3.3 thousand tons of rice, and 2.7 thousand tons of animal feed have been discovered and confiscated from smugglers and hoarders during the past two months.

He added that 1,284 people have been arrested in connection with the smuggling, noting that the total value of the confiscated goods is estimated to be about 9,000 billion rials (about $30 million).

Saying that such figures are alarming, he called for more efficient regulations and supervision over the supply chains, implying that such amounts of goods can only be smuggled through organized crime or with the help of the authorities.

Hajian also said the volume of goods trafficked to the country is also too high to be the work of individual smugglers via border crossings.

In February, the head of Iran’s Headquarters for Combating Smuggling of Goods and Foreign Exchange said the volume of smuggled goods is at least $12.5 billion and only one-third of the goods involved is discovered.

Ali Moayedi Khorramabadi noted that due to political conditions and economic sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic, trade is not conducted in accordance with international laws, therefore a lot of commodities are smuggled in or out of the country.