Tehran Friday prayer leader blames Rouhani administration for abruptly raising gas price

Ayatollah Movahedi-Kermani censured the government of Iranian President Hasan Rouhani ‎for not informing the society before the sudden execution of the gas price hike plan.‎

News ID: 447999

Date: 13 December 2019 - 18:53

RNA – In his Friday prayer sermon in Tehran, Ayatollah Mohammad-Ali Movahedi-Kermani ‎referred to the riots which followed protests against gas price rise in Iran and said, “A ‎calamity occurred due to a wrong decision that led to the death and injury of several people ‎and damage to some part of the country.”‎

He criticized President Hasan Rouhani’s administration for having failed to take the necessary ‎precautions, adding “decisions must be taken gradually. People should have been first ‎informed and convinced before the decision took effect. The sudden implementation of the ‎decision upset the people who had been weary of inflation.”‎

He further advised the government to address the inflation with effective solutions.‎

In mid-November, the Iranian government raised gas prices in order to moderate the ‎national consumption rate.‎

The move prompted protests in a number of cities that went largely peaceful but turned ‎violent when armed riotous individuals took advantage of the situation to vandalize public ‎and state property, and attack civilians and security forces alike.‎

Shortly after the riots broke out, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah ‎Sayyed Ali Khamenei, tasked the Supreme National Security Council with compiling a report ‎detailing the reasons behind the riots and immediate attending of the families of the victims.‎

According to Fars News Agency, on Thursday, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani ‎said enemies had plotted to increase the number of fatalities during the recent riots in ‎several cities, adding that most of the people killed in Tehran province were not even ‎involved in any protest gatherings.‎

‎"More than 85 percent of the victims of the recent incidents in towns of Tehran Province had ‎not taken part in any gathering and were killed with non-organizational firearms and cold ‎weapons in a very suspicious manner,” Shamkhani said in a meeting with families of some of ‎the victims of the riots in the western towns of the province.‎

He noted that there was certainly a plot hatched by the “adversaries” to cause as many ‎fatalities as possible and pin the blame on Iran’s security forces for the killings.‎

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