It was the first known effort by Iranian Arabs to replicate the uprisings across the Arab world.
For decades, the Islamic Republic has experienced periodic outbreaks of violence by groups of Arabs in the southwest, Baluchis in the southeast and Kurds in the northwest. They have objected to what they see as ethnic repression by the Islamic Republic.
The Arab eruptions have been the most limited and least frequent of the trio. They have largely been confined to small bombs, often deposited in city trashcans.
The protest last Friday in Ahvaz, Khuzestan province, if reported correctly, would be a new development.
The first report appeared on a student website and quoted the contents of the alarabiyah.net website.
The head of a local organization named Hazam claimed that sporadic clashes had erupted in one neighborhood of Ahvaz between security forces and local Arabs preparing for what they were calling a “Day of Rage,” a term used in the several of the Arab world’s protests.
The person did not put a number on the size of the protest, but reported that 150 people had been arrested.
He said water, gas and Internet service had been cut off in that part of the city. He said local Basiji had flooded the area and were confiscating computers and satellite TV dishes.
Later, Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi wrote the UN human rights commissioner saying “more than 12” people had been killed in the protests.
And Al-Arabbiya, the Dubai-based television station, said the protests lasted two days and saw 15 Sunni Arabs killed.
Ironically, the suppression of Sunni protesters in Iran comes as the Islamic Republic is denouncing Bahrain for suppressing Shia protesters. The death toll in Bahrain over several weeks of protests is about 18.
Meanwhile, two small bombs were reported to have been set off in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj in the northeast. They exploded minutes apart Saturday night. One of them shattered glass that cut a passerby.
In the last several weeks, some group has been shooting uniformed personnel—police, soldiers, boarder guards. But Saturday’s bombs did not follow that pattern and did not appear aimed at anyone. In fact, they were more in the pattern of the Arab bombings of the past; one of the Sanandaj bombs had been placed in a trashcan.
As for Baluchi violence, none has been reported now for four straight months, an unusual period of silence. The leader of the Baluchi rebel group Jundollah was arrested by Iran in February 2010 and hanged in June. Iran then claimed it had wiped out the band.
But in July, September, October and December, Jundollah carried out two bombings and two kidnappings. The last Jundollah action was a bombing on December 15 in Chabahar that killed 39.