BBC News report on Iran protests does not tell all

The BBC News website ignores one aspect of economic protests in Iran.

On June 25th a report titled “Iran economic protests shut Tehran’s Grand Bazaar” was published on the BBC News website’s Middle East page.

“Traders at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar have taken part in a big protest against rising prices and the plummeting value of Iran’s currency, the rial.

Shops were shut and thousands of people took to the streets of the capital.

Riot police later fired tear gas to disperse the demonstrators as they marched towards parliament.”

The article went on to explain that:

“Fears about the impact of the US sanctions that will start to be reinstated in August and possibly trigger the collapse of the nuclear deal has led to the rial falling to a record low against the dollar on the unofficial foreign exchange market.”

However, one aspect of those demonstrations in Tehran and additional locations did not receive any BBC coverage. MEMRI reports that:

“Footage posted on social media on June 25 showed protesters in various locations in Tehran marching and shouting slogans like “No to Gaza, no to Lebanon! I will give my life to Iran!” and “Death to the dictator.” In one demonstration, the protesters shouted “Our enemy is here! It is a lie that America is our enemy!””

The Times of Israel adds:

“Monday’s protests in Tehran began at the capital’s sprawling Grand Bazaar, which has long been a center of conservatism in Iranian politics and where the ayatollahs’ 1979 Islamic Revolution first gathered pace. Protesters there forced storekeepers to close down their shops Monday.

Videos posted to social media showed protesters chanting: “Death to Palestine,” “No to Gaza, no to Lebanon” and “Leave Syria and think of us.” Chants of “We don’t want the ayatollahs” and “Death to the dictator” were also heard at some rallies.

The demonstrations indicate widespread anger at the regime for spending billions of dollars on regional proxy wars and supporting terrorist groups, instead of investing it on the struggling economy at home.

In recent years, Iran has provided financial aid to Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Shiite militias in Iraq. Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Tehran has poured a reported $6 billion into propping up president Bashar Assad’s government.”

As regular readers know, the BBC serially avoids meaningful reporting on the topic of Iranian terror financing and so it is hardly surprising that those chants by Iranian protesters did not find their way into the corporation’s report.

 

 

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