- Protests over economic difficulties continue in Iran.
- Protesters gathered in Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan.
- State media say the situation was calm in most parts of Iran.
DUBAI: People across Iran were cut off from the outside world on Thursday following a nationwide internet blackout as reported by internet monitoring group NetBlocks.
The shutdown came as fresh protests over rising prices and economic hardship continued in several cities, with protesters again taking to the streets to voice their anger.
No further information about the internet outage was immediately available.
Witnesses in the capital Tehran and major cities Mashhad and Isfahan told Reuters that protesters again gathered in the streets on Thursday, shouting slogans against the Islamic Republic’s clerical rulers.
Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s late Shah toppled in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, called for more protests in a video posted on X on Wednesday.
Posts on social media that could not be independently verified Reuterssaid protesters chanted pro-Pahlavi slogans in several towns and cities across Iran.
However, Iranian state media said cities across the country were calm.
The current protests, the biggest wave of dissent in three years, began last month in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar with shopkeepers denouncing the free fall of the rial currency.
Unrest has since spread across the country amid deepening distress over economic deprivation as a result of rising inflation fueled by mismanagement and Western sanctions and restrictions on political and social freedoms.
President Masoud Pezeshkian warned domestic suppliers against hoarding or overpricing goods, state media reported earlier Thursday.
“People should not feel any shortage in terms of supply and distribution of goods,” he said, urging 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.
