How Iranians Protest: The 2019 Gasoline Protests

By Michał Jagielski

Senior Middle East and Iran Analyst

Genocide Watch

When the state announced gasoline rationing and increased petrol prices, on Nov. 15, 2019, the Iranian people took to the streets. The protests came to be known as Bloody Aban, or Bloody November, and they were, at the time, the largest and most violent display of opposition to the Islamic Republic.

Iranian protesters rally against an increase in petrol prices, in the central city of Isfahan. [AFP]

The new law stipulated that every motorist was allowed to purchase 60 liters of gas a month at 15,000 Iranian rials, with each additional liter costing them 30,000 rials, an increase of 50-300%, respectively. The extra state income of approximately 2.5bn USD would ostensibly fund a new social initiative aimed at relieving some of the financial strains experienced by the country's poor.

Despite having some of the cheapest gasoline in the world, three factors combined to unsettle Iranian society enough to openly express its grievances. Those were the relatively significant price hike, the ever-eroding trust in state officials due to widespread corruption and misuse of state funds, and an economy struggling under the weight of international sanctions.

Initially, the protests were mostly peaceful. People, mostly the youth and the working class, organized blockades on major roads, leaving their vehicles in the middle, stopping traffic, and chanting against the price increase. However, the mood rapidly shifted once protesters began using slogans such as “They live like kings, people get poorer,” against the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the government. As the protests spilled to over 100 cities, protestors began to attack state-affiliated buildings. Iran’s Ministry of Interior reported more than 140 attacks against government sites, including petrol stations, banks, and police stations.

The government’s response was swift and brutal. Within hours, a nationwide four-day internet shutdown was imposed. Only access to the state-controlled domestic network, the National Information Network, remained, leaving general internet connectivity at 7%.

Shielded from the eyes of the international community, the state security apparatus began one of the bloodiest crackdowns in the Islamic Republic’s history. The police, the Basij, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) used lethal force against the protesters in several instances. Reports described civilians being shot in the upper body and head while fleeing, suggesting deliberate targeting of civilians. One witness described the scenes in Tehran as having “the smell of gunfire and smoke everywhere.” The crackdown extended to social media, with authorities pursuing users who shared videos of the protests and arresting journalists, students, and activists. Those arrested, including women and children, were brought to detention centers in blindfolds and showed signs of torture, beatings, and flogging. During and after the protests, security forces raided hospitals and demanded lists of recently admitted patients, looking for protest participants.

It is difficult to determine how many people were detained and killed during the 2019 protests, as is frequently the case with state-sponsored violence in Iran. According to state officials, over 7,000 people were arrested as of November 26, 2019. Amnesty International was able to verify 304 casualties of the state-sponsored crackdown. Reuters, however, reported that the real number could have surpassed 1,500.

The protests and their participants were framed by the state as both hooligans and saboteurs who spread “intimidation and terror” and coordinated and trained agents of foreign enemies. The security officials, on the other hand, were presented as defenders of Islam and Iran’s sovereignty. Funerals of the “martyred defenders of security” were broadcast on state television, alongside interviews with civilians who claimed that the deaths of their family members were exploited by foreign media outlets to spread lies about Iran’s leadership.

The chilling conduct and framing strategies of the state during the 2019 protests served as a blueprint for future crackdowns on civilians. After 2019, security forces were deployed much more quickly and were given an almost absolute level of freedom and impunity. In 2009, during the Green Movement protests, 72 people were killed by security forces; in the 2017–2018 economic protests, around 20 were killed. The public knew the death toll was higher in 2019, but the government would not reveal it. The state also refused to release the number of detained and killed civilians, a precedent it would follow in the years to come. Furthermore, the narrative employed by officials turned toward condemning acts of rightful social and political dissent, presenting them as being carried out in the service of foreign enemies. People who were killed by the state were portrayed as disruptors of the social order, while security officials who died were presented as martyrs. This constituted a significant shift in the state's behavior. In the following years, it would employ similar or greater levels of violent crackdown and continue to insist that those who oppose the status quo are traitors and foreign agents.

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