Iran’s Shopkeepers Strike in Support of Protest Movement

Iranian shopkeepers across the country closed their stores and went on a planned three-day strike starting Tuesday in solidarity with a monthslong protest movement demanding the ouster of the clerical leadership.

The strikes this week are also meant to mark the three-year anniversary of a violent crackdown on protesters in 2019, the last time Iranians seriously challenged the ruling establishment.

In Tehran, shopkeepers in the Grand Bazaar, a key node in the country’s economy, closed their stores and chanted “death to the dictator.” Security forces were out in large numbers in the capital, deployed in locations where protests have previously taken place. Steelworkers in the capital and the city of Isfahan also went on strike, according to footage and pictures on social media.

Across the western Kurdistan province, which since the beginning of the movement has seen some of the most active protests, shopkeepers closed markets in at least 18 cities, according to Hengaw, an Oslo-based human-rights organization focused on the Kurdish region.

The strikes compound pressure on Iranian authorities as Iran’s labor unions and workers in recent weeks added momentum to the protests that have also been fueled by high-school and university students.

Students of numerous universities in Kurdistan boycotted classes on Tuesday. Footage circulated by Hengaw showed some students chanting: “For every one that you kill, a thousand people will rise.”

Medical students in the southern city of Yazd refused to go to hospitals and clinics where they were working as interns, according to medical student activists on social media.

The protest movement erupted following the death on Sept. 16 in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s strict Islamic dress code. Over the past two months, the protests morphed from demands to abolish forced veiling by law to calls to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

To intimidate Iranians from protesting, the government has arrested more than 15,000 people, according to rights groups, which also say over 300 protesters and bystanders have been killed during the protests, including more than 50 minors.

Earlier this month, a majority of lawmakers in the Iranian Parliament—which according to Iran’s constitution can’t issue legal sentences—urged the country’s judiciary to sentence arrested protesters to death. Following that call, celebrities and politicians in the West denounced what they said was Iran’s decision to impose capital punishment on all protesters arrested during the unrest.

The politicians included Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who late Monday said, “Canada denounces the Iranian regime’s barbaric decision to impose the death penalty on nearly 15,000 protesters.”

Yet so far, only one Iranian protester is known to have been sentenced to death, for setting fire to a government building, in the first known use of capital punishment by authorities seeking to suppress the current antigovernment movement.

Iranian authorities say they have issued indictments of more than 1,000 people in Tehran for a range of offenses.

Among the high-profile arrests was that of Iranian blogger and human-rights activist Hossein Ronaghi, who after spending days in hospital following a hunger strike was transferred back to Evin Prison, the main detention facility holding political prisoners in the capital, Tehran.

Hospital doctors on Tuesday said Mr. Ronaghi’s condition had improved enough to allow him to be discharged, according to the Iranian judiciary’s news agency, Mizan. Mr. Ronaghi, who was arrested during the recent protests, has previously written pieces for The Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages.