Iran International:

More shop owners and merchants in Iran’s capital Tehran as well as smaller cities Monday joined a strike that started on Sunday, protesting newly imposed taxes.

Meanwhile, pensioners have kept on their rallies and teachers are set to join a new round of nationwide protests.

On Monday, merchants in the city of Kazeroun in the southern province of Fars refused to open their shops joining a growing strike movement by merchants in the provincial capital Shiraz as well as Tehran and Arak who kept their shops and the bazaar closed for the second day in a row.

The protest by shop owners in Tehran also expanded when merchants in the old Lalehzar shopping district, a hub for businesses related to lights and electric devices, also kept their businesses closed on Monday, and held protest rallies against rising taxes and a falling national currency, as the rial hit an all-time low against the US dollar over the weekend.

Amid runaway inflation and economic chaos, one US dollar surpassed 333,000 rials on Sunday. This represents a more than 25-percent decline since late March and a 10-fold drop since 2017.

According to videos published on social media, security forces clashed with the protesters on the Lalehzar street, beating them and seizing their cellphones.

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