Iranian oil workers held in crackdown on protests

The regime is attempting to stop the unrest spreading from the country’s schools and universities.

Workers block the road to the Asalouyeh energy plant. Picture: AFP

Iranian state authorities moved to prevent anti-regime protests from spreading to the country’s oil sector on Tuesday, announcing arrests of striking workers at a major petrochemical plant.

Some arrests were made at the Asalouyeh plant in the province of Bushehr, also home to Iran’s sole nuclear power plant, according to the governor, Ali Hashemi.

He confirmed that workers had organised a union meeting.

“Unfortunately, a number of opportunists infiltrated and set fire to construction sheds and rubbish bins,” he said.

The regime is attempting to stop the protests spreading from the country’s schools and universities. They began last month after the death in custody of a young woman who had been ­arrested for not properly wearing a hijab.

Amid an economic crisis, in part caused by US sanctions on the oil industry, senior figures in the regime will be aware that it came to power on the back of a wave of strikes and protests that overthrew the last Shah in 1979.

Workers at the Abadan oil refinery, the country’s most important and once the largest in the world, have been protesting since Monday, though there has been no sign of a crackdown there yet.

Protests were also reported at the Kangan oil refinery complex, again in Bushehr province, on Iran’s Gulf coast.

On Monday evening, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, the regime chief justice, gave the first sign of a softening of the authorities’ position, calling for dialogue about the protests.

“I am ready,” he said in a television broadcast. “Let’s talk. If we’ve made mistakes, we can undo them. If we have any shortcomings or weaknesses, we can work on them too.”

At the same time, a fiercer crackdown was taking place in the Kurdish areas of western Iran, home to the family of Mahsa Amini, 22, the woman whose death sparked the uprising.

Security forces fired shots in residential areas of Sanandaj in Kurdistan province, the town worst hit by protests, according to videos leaked from behind a tight security cordon. Another video purported to show tanks being moved towards the region.

Meanwhile, Paris accused Iran of arresting a fifth French national in a sign of worsening relations. One French couple – Cecile Kohler, a teaching union official, and her partner, Jacques Paris, who were arrested in May – were forced to make a public “confession” of spying last week.

The Times