The anti-government protests in Tehran expand after Iran shoots down a Ukrainian passenger plane. Up to 3,000 people demonstrated yesterday on the Asadi Square in the capital, according to the ILNA news agency, and also criticized the fact that the Iranian leadership concealed the facts.
calls for his resignation
According to the report, there were calls for the resignation of everyone involved in government offices and authorities. Police and security forces tried to end the protests, according to ILNA. Hundreds of people, mainly students, had protested against the leadership of the Islamic Republic in the days after the line machine was accidentally shot down on Wednesday.
At this point in time, the Iranian authorities still maintained that a technical defect had caused the plane to crash. On Saturday, the military then admitted the plane was accidentally shot down. The entire Iranian leadership expressed regret at the incident.
Launched promptly to missile attack
The launch of the machine coincided with the worsening of the conflict between the United States and Iran. The situation escalated after the US military targeted the Iranian top general Kassem Soleimani in Baghdad by air strike.
After a subsequent retaliatory attack by Iran on US military bases in Iraq, the fear of an uncontrollable expansion of the conflict grew. Most recently, both countries announced that they wanted to resolve their political tensions.
Trump warned the Iranian leadership against violent action against protesting government critics. „Don’t kill your demonstrators,“ he wrote in capital letters on Twitter. „Thousands have already been killed or detained by you.“ The United States and the whole world would watch, Trump warned. He later had the Twitter message repeated in Persian.
Police: no shots
The Iranian police, however, rejected evidence that it had shot at demonstrators. „The police did not fire at the protests because the capital police had been ordered to restrain themselves,“ said police chief Hossein Rahimi.
