DUBAI, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Students held protests which led to clashes at several Iranian universities for a second day on Sunday, according to local news agencies and social media posts, with Iran facing a U.S. military buildup as it seeks to reach a nuclear deal with Washington.
The fresh unrest follows anti-government demonstrations last month in which thousands of people were killed in the worst domestic unrest since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran’s state TV carried videos of what it said were individuals “pretending to be students” attacking pro-government students in Tehran who were taking part in protests to condemn January’s disturbances, with these individuals allegedly injuring students by throwing rocks.
Protests also took place at universities in Mashhad in the northeast, according to videos published by the U.S.-based rights group HRANA, which said the intervention of security forces in the protests led to injuries.
On Saturday a video purportedly showed rows of marchers at Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology condemning Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a “murderous leader”, and calling for Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s toppled shah, to be a new monarch.
The recent protests, which started in December over economic hardships and quickly turned political, were repressed in the most violent crackdown since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
(Reporting by Elwely Elwelly, Editing by William Maclean)
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