Initially caused by a 50–200% increase in fuel prices,[13][14][15] they occurred as part of the wider Iranian Democracy Movement, leading to calls for the overthrow of the government in Iran and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

[19] According to an estimate by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani cited in the Atlantic Council, inflation sent nearly 1.6 million Iranians into poverty in just a single year prior to the November 2019 protest,[43] with a similar figure given by the Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation's office for employment and social welfare.

[citation needed] In September 2019, just two months before the uprising, a former member of Iran's Parliament, Behzad Nabavi, told an interviewer that the Razavi Economic Foundation (which is presided over by Khamenei), together with the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS), controls about 60% of the Iranian economy.

[57][58] Students at the University of Tehran gathered for a second day to protest on 16 November, the current situation in the country and chanted "Death to the dictator", and "Not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life only for Iran".

[69] On 26 December, security forces attacked different cemeteries around Iran to prevent the families, of those killed in November uprising, from holding ceremonies in honour of the 40th day of the death of their loved ones.

Seasonal workers in Marivan participated in a strike movement as well, despite attacks by the security forces and intimidation meant to quell public protests that had begun on 24 January triggered by economic grievances.

[73] In online social media videos posted in the evening of a location near Azadi Square in Tehran, there were sounds of gunshots, pools of blood on the ground, wounded people being carried and security personnel with rifles.

[81] In the video surfacing on the internet, many Tehran university students openly refused to walk over the American and Israeli flags which was the symbol of the country's foreign policy of anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism since the inception of the Islamic Republic.

[84] On 15 January, students in Isfahan and other Iranian cities held their 5th day of protests, after the government of Ayatollah Khamenei admitted downing the Ukrainian passenger plane.

[85] On the 40th day anniversary of the Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 victims memorial at Amir Kabir University on 16 February, students chanted against the ruling system and called for the boycott of the 2020 parliamentary election.

Michael Page, the organization's deputy director for the Middle East says, "Iranian authorities are now confronting popular protests with an astonishing level of violence".

On 16 July 2020, amid a heavy security presence, protesters took to the streets of Behbehan and chanted "We don't want a clerical regime" and "Not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life only for Iran".

Maryam Rajavi supported the protest action, mentioning on Twitter, "The clerical regime has abandoned our people in the clutches of disease, unemployment and poverty.

][citation needed] On 16 July 2020, amid a heavy security presence, protesters took to the streets of Behbehan and chanted "We don't want a clerical regime" and "Not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life only for Iran".

Massive labour protests also hit areas nationwide like: Rasht, Zanjan, Yazd, Abadan, Behbahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Isfahan, Ahvaz, Khorramshahr, Kerman, Mashhad, Ardebil and Qom.

After Mohammad Reza Shajarian's death, massive and large anti-regime protests broke out in Tehran, as thousands called for press freedom and the government of Hassan Rouhani to step down.

Many protest chants and slogans were directed at expressing discontent with the Iranian government's spending on conflicts in Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.

", "Bless your soul Reza Shah", "Not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life only for Iran", "Oil money has been lost, it has all been spent on Palestine", "They have brought up Islam, but trampled the people", "The supreme leader lives like a God.

[134] On 2 September 2020, Amnesty International accused the Iranian government of widespread abuse of human rights during the 2019 protests that were sparked following soaring fuel prices.

According to latest rights group report, Iran resorted to arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment of those involved in the November unrest that rocked the Islamic Republic.

[135] The European Parliament condemned the government of Iran for harassment of lawyers and journalists, and for denying legal assistance to the large number of protesters already in jail.

[141] In January 2020, Amnesty International's investigator on Iran, Raha Bahreini, said she had received reports that a woman protester, detained during anti-government demonstrations following the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane, had been taken to a police station and sexually assaulted by security forces.

[147][144] One anonymous dissident politician told US journalist Dexter Filkins that he thinks the higher death estimates may be more accurate as in one location "two hundred people" were buried in "a single night".

[53] On 19 November, Amnesty International claimed that around 16 people were killed in Kermanshah, 14 each in Bandar-e Mahshahr and in Javanroud, 9 in Mariwan, 8 in Behbahan, 6 each in Ramhormoz, Sadra and in Shiraz, 4 each in Bukan, Karaj and in Robatkarim, 3 in Khorramshahr, 2 each in Abadan, Ahvaz and in Bumahen, and 1 each in Tehran, Isfahan, Eslamshahr, Sanandaj, Shahriar and in Sirjan.

[160][161] As Reuters has reported, on the second day of Iran protest, in the presence of president Hassan Rouhani, some of his ministers and commanders of the security forces, asserting the government was in total danger, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called to crush the demonstrators, stating "You have my order [...] Do whatever it takes to end it".

Two injured protesters, 23-year-old Mohammad Maleki, and Amir Ojani, 43 years old, died in the last days of January due to an acute infection and respiratory diseases.

[167] The order was "confirmed by three sources close to the supreme leader's inner circle and a fourth official, set in motion the bloodiest crackdown on protesters since the Islamic Revolution in 1979".

[169] The government agents in Iran were accused of stealing the bodies of the dead protesters from morgues, and arresting the injured from hospitals, to give the uprising a lower profile.

In return, another hardliner has asked the Guardian Council to disqualify Motahari as a candidate for the upcoming elections for his "accuses the Supreme Leader in the gasoline issue".

[205] On 19 December 2019, the United States Government enforced sanctions on two Iranian judges, Abolghassem Salavati and Mohammad Moghisseh, for suppressing "freedoms of speech and assembly".