- Protests continue over economic difficulties in Iran.
- Protesters gathered in Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan.
- State media say the situation was calm in most of Iran.
DUBAI: People across Iran were cut off from the outside world on Thursday after a nationwide internet blackout, internet monitoring group NetBlocks reported.
The blackout came as fresh protests over rising prices and economic hardship continued in several cities, with protesters once again taking to the streets to express their anger.
No further information was immediately available about the internet outage.
Witnesses in the capital Tehran and the main cities of Mashhad and Isfahan said Reuters that protesters gathered in the streets again on Thursday, chanting slogans against the Islamic Republic’s clerical rulers.
Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late Shah of Iran overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, called for more protests in a video posted on X on Wednesday.
Social media posts, which could not be independently verified by ReutersHe said protesters chanted pro-Pahlavi slogans in several cities and towns across Iran.
Iranian state media, however, said cities across the country were calm.
The current protests, the largest wave of dissent in three years, began last month in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar when merchants condemned the free fall of the rial currency.
Since then, unrest has spread across the country amid deepening anguish over economic deprivation arising from rising inflation driven by Western mismanagement and sanctions, and restrictions on political and social freedoms.
President Masoud Pezeshkian warned domestic suppliers against hoarding or overpricing goods, state media reported earlier on Thursday.
“People should not feel any shortage in terms of supply and distribution of goods,” he said, calling on his government to ensure adequate supply of goods and monitoring of prices across the country.
Tehran remains under international pressure with US President Donald Trump threatening to come to the aid of protesters if security forces fire on them, seven months after Israeli and US forces bombed Iranian nuclear facilities.
