SATURDAY, MAY 28 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU A
BY BABAK DEHGHANPISHEHStreet protests in several Irani-
an cities in recent weeks, sparked
by the soaring costs of food and
other staples, have underscored
the challenges facing Iran’s gov-
ernment from global shortages
caused by war in Ukraine and the
continued imposition of Western
sanctions as talks to restore a 2015
nuclear deal remain stalled.
In several places, the protests
quickly took a political turn with
Iranians chanting slogans against
President Ebrahim Raisi and even
the country’s highest authority
and supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei. A violent crackdown
by the authorities on the protests
has resulted in at least five deaths
and scores of arrests, according to
human rights activists and posts
on social media sites.
Videos posted online show pro-
testers scrambling through
streets while taking fire from se-
curity forces and being tear-
gassed.
Prices spiked two weeks ago
after the government cut subsi-
dies for eggs, chicken, dairy prod-
ucts and cooking oil. An increase
in the price of bread earlier in the
month was caused by government
adjustments to wheat prices but is
also linked to the worldwide
shortage of the commodity be-
cause of Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine, economists say.
The government had hoped
that negotiations to revive the
multilateral 2015 nuclear deal be-
tween Iran and world powers
would lead to the removal of one
source of economic hardship:
Western sanctions that were re-
imposed on Tehran after the
Trump administration withdrew
from the deal in 2018. In addition
to the sanctions, though, many
Iranians blame government cor-
ruption and ineptitude for a grow-
ing litany of woes, including high
inflation.
The current unrest recalls
waves of protests that have bro-
ken out in recent years, including
in 2019, when demonstrations
were sparked by fuel price in-
creases. Hundreds were killed
and thousands of people were
arrested during the protests in
dozens of cities, according to hu-
man rights groups. The latest pro-
tests have been smaller in size and
focused in heavily impoverished
areas, including the Khuzestan
province in southwest Iran, a fre-
quent site of popular discontent.
Teachers have also been pro-
testing for months to demand an
increase in wages, amid com-
plaints that educators work two
or three jobs to get by. Security
forces arrested at least 14 teachers
at protests in early May, according
to the Emtedad News site. Seniorpoliticians have warned in recent
months that the government
could face a backlash because of
the increasingly dire economic
crisis.
A return to the nuclear deal
would lead to the removal of many
sanctions in exchange for curbs
on Iran’s nuclear program.
Talks in Vienna earlier this year
between all the signatories to the
deal, as well as the United States,
stalled in March because of an
Iranian demand that the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, the
strongest military force in the
country, be removed from the U.S.
list of terrorist organizations.
The Biden administration has
not replied to the demand, but
Israel’s prime minister, in messag-
es posted on Twitter this week,
said Biden had confirmed to himin a telephone call late last month
that he would “keep ... the IRGC”
on the list, “which is where it
belongs.”
The European Union’s coordi-
nator for the Iran nuclear deal
negotiations, Enrique Mora, visit-
ed Tehran on May 11 in an attempt
to restart the nuclear talks, but
Iran’s leaders may have already
reached the conclusion that the
deal is out of reach, observers say.
“The recent moves of the Irani-
an government send a very clear
message that they’ve lost hope in
the nuclear deal or don’t want to
enact it,” Saeed Leylaz, an econo-
mist and political analyst based in
Tehran, said in a telephone inter-
view, referring to the subsidy cuts.
“With these economic reforms,
they’re sending the message that
they don’t depend on the dealanymore.”
The United States has also ex-
pressed pessimism. At a Senate
Foreign Relations Committee
hearing on Wednesday, U.S. Spe-
cial Envoy for Iran Robert Malley
said that the chances of reaching a
deal are “at best, tenuous.”
Even if the nuclear deal were
restored, Iran, like many other
countries, is likely to suffer from
the global wheat shortage.
“The issue of wheat is tied to
issues of food security, interna-
tional security and the crisis in
Ukraine,” Leylaz said. “With the
current estimates, it appears that
it may be a tough winter in terms
of supplying foodstuffs.”
Ordinary Iranians are already
feeling the pinch. Atoosa, an un-
employed resident of Tehran, the
capital, said the prices of milk and
eggs have skyrocketed at her local
grocery store and that people
have taken to comparing prices at
different stores to see whether
they can find a better deal.
“We can’t do anything. Every-
thing is in the hands of the gov-
ernment powers,” she said. “If
they wanted to, they could remove
this. We’re all just a bunch of
slaves.”
Grocery stores are not neces-
sarily benefiting from the price
hikes. One worker at a grocery
store in Shahr-e Kord, a small
town in central Iran that has been
rocked by protests in the past two
weeks, said that their business has
dropped by half since the govern-
ment slashed the subsidies.
“The milk that we sold has
more than doubled in price. No-
body is buying it; it’s just sitting
there. Eggs, chicken, it’s all the
same,” said the worker, who spoke
on the condition of anonymity for
safety reasons. “Everyone is com-
plaining about this issue, and
they’re unhappy about the prices.
It would be great if they brought
the prices down.”
Security forces appear to openfire on a crowd of protesters in
Shahr-e Kord in one video posted
on social media. Another video
from the city shows a plainclothes
security officer dragging a pro-
tester off the top of a car amid the
sounds of gunshots and screams.
Protesters chant “Death to
Khamenei” and “Death to Raisi”
while gathered around what ap-
pears to be a burning car in the
town of Ardal in another video
posted online.
Many videos posted on social
media in the past two weeks show
the heavy presence of security
forces in full riot gear in numer-
ous cities, including Tehran. The
Washington Post could not inde-
pendently verify the authenticity
of these videos.
Along with deploying security
forces, the Iranian government
has also tried to curb the spread of
videos and information about the
protests by slowing down the In-
ternet. NetBlocks, an Internet
monitoring group, logged severe
disruptions in Internet access in
Iran in mid-May.
Iranian officials have said the
government will give financial
support to low-income families to
offset the recent price increases,
but officials have also not ruled
out raising prices on other goods.
At a gathering in Tehran focused
on privatization on Saturday, Rai-
si said that the government will be
making some “tough decisions”
without providing further details,
according to YJC, a news site affili-
ated with Iranian state television.
“These protests and frustra-
tions are not unexpected at all,”
said Hadi Ghaemi, executive di-
rector of the Center for Human
Rights in Iran, a New York-based
advocacy group. “This is a culmi-
nation of an economic collapse
and a complete loss of faith in the
political system.”
“The country is very volatile
and hungering for change,” he
said.Iran works to squash protests over rising food prices
ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK
An Iranian man walks with his shopping haul in Tehran on May 13. The government has cut subsidies
for basic food items, such as cooking oil, chicken, eggs and dairy products, as much as 300 percent.BY MIRIAM BERGERA French court on Wednesday
charged the former head of the
Louvre museum in Paris with
fraud in connection with his
alleged role in trafficking mil-
lions of dollars’ worth of art.
Jean-Luc Martinez, who has
denied any wrongdoing, stands
accused of “complicity in fraud”
and “false facilitation of the ‘ori-
gin of property derived from a
crime or misdemeanor,’” a
French judicial official, com-
menting on the condition of ano-
nymity as a matter of court policy,
told The Washington Post in an
email.
Martinez allegedly ignored
documents falsifying the origins
of several Egyptian antiquities
sold for $8.5 million in 2016 to
the Louvre Abu Dhabi, according
to the French newspaper Le Ca-
nard Enchaîné, which broke the
story.
Among the artifacts in ques-
tion is a pink granite stele bear-
ing the seal of the Egyptian
pharaoh Tutankhamen. The tall
stone slab includes a decree by
Tutankhamen guaranteeing the
protection of a high priest and
dates to 1327 B.C.
Martinez ran the Paris Louvre
from 2013 until last year. He now
serves as the French Foreign
Ministry’s ambassador in charge
of international cooperation on
cultural heritage, a role that in-
cludes working to prevent art
trafficking.
French authorities, who
opened the case in 2018, detained
two specialists along with Marti-
nez. Both have been released
without charges, the French judi-
cial official said.
In March, French officials ar-
rested German Lebanese gallery
owner Roben Dib, who brokeredthe deals in question. Dib is a
suspect in several other cases,
including in the sale of a stolen
ancient Egyptian stele to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York. The city later returned
the stele to Egypt.
French investigators suspect
hundreds of artifacts were stolen
from Egypt and throughout the
Middle East during the upheaval
of the 2011 Arab Spring.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi did not
respond to requests for com-
ment. A spokesperson for the
Louvre in Paris declined to com-
ment.
The two museums share a
name but are separate institu-
tions.
The French state owns the
Louvre in Paris, which is the
world’s most visited museum.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi is owned
by the United Arab Emirates,
which opened the museum in2017 under a partnership with
France.
The deal included the UAE
leasing the Louvre name from
France for 30 years at a cost of
some $500 million.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi told the
BBC it could not comment on the
ongoing investigation.
“Louvre Abu Dhabi applies a
strict international protocol for
artworks entering the collection,
as outlined in the intergovern-
mental agreement between Abu
Dhabi and France, signed in
2007,” the museum told the BBC
in a statement. “This protocol is
strictly aligned with the 1970
Unesco Convention [against the
illicit trafficking of cultural arti-
facts] and follows the most strin-
gent standards of major mu-
seums in the world.”Rick Noack in Paris contributed to
this report.Ex-Louvre president accused of ‘complicity in fraud’ in art tra∞cking case
GONZALO FUENTES/REUTERS
People walk near the glass pyramid of the Louvre in Paris earlier
this month. The Louvre is the world’s most visited museum.BY STEVE HENDRIX
AND SHIRA RUBINjerusalem — Israeli officials are
bracing for potential violence at a
planned march by Jewish nation-
alists through a Palestinian
neighborhood here Sunday, a re-
peat of a rally last year that ended
with rockets fired at Jerusalem
and an ensuing 11-day war with
Hamas in the Gaza strip.
Government leaders have re-
fused to delay or change the pro-
vocative route of the Jerusalem
Day march, an annual event
marking Israel’s takeover of the
Old City and other Arab neigh-
borhoods in 1967.
Some analysts say the day
could mark a turning point in
recent tensions, either capping or
accelerating two months of clash-
es at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque
and a surge in terrorist attacks
that killed 19 people in Israel,
most of them civilians.
Security officials said that they
hope a withering series of raids
and arrests against suspected
militants in recent weeks will be
enough to head off any deadly
violence.
A recent respite from the at-
tacks in Israel has left some secu-
rity experts hopeful the measures
had blunted what Israel’s prime
minister characterized as a
“wave” of killings, some by assail-
ants wielding knives.
“The [military] is arresting
people in the West Bank to inter-
cept some who had big plans to
kill Israelis and to explode Is-
raelis,” said Yaakov Amidror, a
one-time parliamentary security
adviser to the prime minister now
with the Jewish Institute for Na-
tional Security of America in
Washington. “The test of whether
this is all over will be Sunday,
Jerusalem Day.”
Officials said they planned to
deploy hundreds of police officers
along the route, and said they had
refused requests by some groups
to parade through the plaza at
al-Aqsa, a site considered sacred
by both Jews and Muslims.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, an-
other militant group in Gaza,
threatened retaliation if the pa-
rade encroached on al-Aqsa. A
spokesman for Islamic Jihad said
mediators from Egypt and Qatar
have offered “reassurances” that
the march would avoid the plaza.
But the rally will be allowed to
follow its usual route, entering
the Old City through the Damas-
cus Gate and passing the spice
stalls and halal butchers of the
ancient Muslim Quarter before
reaching the Jewish Western
Wall. An Israeli security official
said the event would conform
with previous Jerusalem Day
marches.
“It’s a parade that’s been going
on for 34 years. Nothing about it
is changing the status quo,” said
the official, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity to discuss
security preparations.
The day will be a test of the
military’s supercharged crack-
down on suspected militants in
the West Bank that has seen near
nightly raids in recent weeks. The
IDF said it has arrested more than
400 individuals “suspected of ter-
ror activity” in operations since
March 31.
The raids, carried out in Nab-
lus, Jenin and other West Bank
cities considered hotbeds of mili-
tancy, have been violent. The ac-
tions have resulted in the deathsof 14 Palestinians, according to
the United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs, or OCHA, a monitoring
agency.
The 14 were among 31 people,
including seven children, shot
and killed by Israeli forces, during
military operations, in clashes
and during attempted Palestinian
attacks on Israelis, since the end
of March, according to OCHA.
One of the Jenin raids was
being covered by Al Jazeera jour-
nalist Shireen Abu Akleh when
she was fatally shot between her
helmet and her protective vest
marked “Press.” Reporters with
her told The Washington Post
they were sheltered away from
the danger when they were tar-
geted by Israeli soldiers. Israel
said the journalists were caught
in a crossfire and that it is inves-
tigating where the bullets camefrom.
Israeli officials say the raids
have worked to slow the worst
surge of terrorist violence since a
campaign of knife attacks rocked
Jerusalem in 2015 and 2016. The
recent spike began in March
when 11 civilians were killed in
three separate attacks over a
week, including when a gunmen
shot up a Tel Aviv bar.
In all, 19 have been killed by
perpetrators using automatic
weapons, knives and vehicles. In
an assault on Israel’s independ-
ence day, two Palestinian men
allegedly bludgeoned three men
to death with an ax in the ultra-
Orthodox town of Elad.
Of particular concern to secu-
rity officials was the potential
involvement of the Islamic State
extremist group, or ISIS, in two of
the attacks.
A Palestinian man living inIsrael who had previously con-
fessed to supporting the group
fatally ran over a bicyclist and
stabbed three other Israelis to
death in the desert city of Beer-
sheba. And two men from the
Arab-Israeli town of Um al-Fahm
pledged allegiance to ISIS on vid-
eo before shooting two Israelis to
death in Hadera.
At least two of the attackers
had expressed fealty to ISIS in the
past. One of them, Ibrahim Ighba-
riah, was imprisoned for 18
months in 2016 for trying to join
ISIS fighters in Syria.
ISIS-related attacks have been
rare in Israel. Intelligence ana-
lysts have concluded that while
the three perpetrators involved
were self-declared ISIS followers,
the Islamist group itself had no
role in planning the attacks and
there was no connection between
them, according to a senior Israeli
official familiar with the intelli-
gence.
“So far as we can tell, these
were isolated incidents,” said Cole
Bunzel, a researcher into jihad-
ism and ISIS at the Hoover Insti-
tute.
ISIS enjoys “very little” support
among Palestinians, Bunzel said.
In turn, ISIS has expressed con-
tempt for Hamas and other
groups for being focused on Pal-
estinian independence rather
than Islamic supremacy.
“They are happy to take credit
for an attack, but Palestine is not a
priority for ISIS,” Bunzel said.
Israel has instead responded to
the string of attacks as uncon-
nected “lone-wolf” events in-
spired by calls to action from
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic
Jihad.
In a series of tactics Israeliofficials said had been refined in
the years since the last wave of
knife attacks, security forces
monitor social media and gather
traditional human intelligence to
identify individuals — often
young people with family or fi-
nancial problems — who are most
likely to plan a solo attack.
Israel has also launched new
volunteer civilian defense patrols
that have attracted more than
4,000 armed recruits. The mili-
tary has also instituted periodic
lockdowns around Jenin and oth-
er communities, prohibiting resi-
dents from traveling to jobs in
Israel. The policy is meant to
thwart the movement of potential
terrorists, experts say, but also to
generate local pressure against
individuals who might be consid-
ering an attack.
“The message gets through
that if there is a terrorist that
[carries out an attack], then
they’re not going to be able to
make living,” said Yisrael Hasson,
a former deputy director of Shin
Bet, the Israeli security agency.
Others condemned the policy
as collective punishment. Few of
the estimated 12,000 impover-
ished families in Jenin who were
blocked from working as a result
of the Israeli lockdowns were
likely involved in terrorist activi-
ties, advocates said.
“The ripple effect [of the clo-
sure] is felt all around and im-
mediately,” said Nour Odeh, a
Palestinian activist in Ramallah.
“It doesn’t take months. When
there is no money coming in,
there is no food on the table.”Sufian Taha contributed to this
report. Hazem Balousha contributed
from Gaza.Israel braces for possible violence ahead of planned Jerusalem Day march
JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Israeli forces gather at the scene of an attempted stabbing a t a
checkpoint i n the occupied West Bank on May 17.