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Iran Police Disperse Pro-Azerbaijan Demonstrations

Iranian police are dispersing protests [Getty]
Iranian police are dispersing protests [Getty]
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Iran Police Disperse Pro-Azerbaijan Demonstrations

Iranian police are dispersing protests [Getty]
Iranian police are dispersing protests [Getty]

Police dispersed demonstrations in northwestern Iran in support of Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, the Fars news agency reported.

Protests broke out on Thursday in Tabriz, the capital of Iran's East Azerbaijan province, where a large Azeri minority lives, wrote Fars which also published two videos showing dozens of people gathered in streets chanting slogans in the Azeri language.

In one video, there appeared to be a deployment of police, according to AFP.

In Tabriz, "around 500 people gathered and chanted slogans in support of the end of the occupation of Karabakh", an Armenian separatist enclave within Azerbaijan, Fars said.

"Some tried to disrupt the atmosphere with ethnic slogans (but) the police intervened to stop the rally," the agency added.

"Some people" were arrested by "security forces" in Zanjan for having chanted "ethnocentric slogans", Fars noted, without providing further details.

According to some estimates, there are around 10 million Azeris out of Iran's population of 80 million, which also includes an Armenian community of just under 100,000.

Clashes have raged between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces since Sunday over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian province that broke away from Baku in a bitterly fought war in the early 1990s that claimed 30,000 lives.

According to AFP, the clashes, the worst since 2016, have raised fears of a new war between the two countries.

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Kremlin Says Europe Will Feel the Recoil from Its 'Illegal' Sanctions on Russia

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with the heads of international news agencies at the newly renovated St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with the heads of international news agencies at the newly renovated St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
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Kremlin Says Europe Will Feel the Recoil from Its 'Illegal' Sanctions on Russia

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with the heads of international news agencies at the newly renovated St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with the heads of international news agencies at the newly renovated St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

The Kremlin said in remarks published on Sunday that the tougher the sanctions imposed on Russia by Europe, the more painful the recoil would be for Europe's own economies as Russia had grown resistant to such "illegal" sanctions.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 triggered a wave of Western sanctions on Russia and it is by far the most sanctioned major economy in the world.

The West said that it hoped its sanctions would force President Vladimir Putin to seek peace in Ukraine, and though the economy contracted in 2022, it grew in 2023 and 2024 at faster rates than the European Union.

The European Commission on June 10 proposed a new round of sanctions against Russia, targeting Moscow's energy revenues, its banks and its military industry, though the United States has so far refused to toughen its own sanctions.

Asked about remarks by Western European leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron that toughening sanctions would force Russia to negotiate an end to the war, the Kremlin said only logic and arguments could force Russia to negotiate.

"The more serious the package of sanctions, which, I repeat, we consider illegal, the more serious will be the recoil from a gun to the shoulder. This is a double-edged sword," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television.

Peskov told state television's top Kremlin correspondent, Pavel Zarubin, that he did not doubt the EU would impose further sanctions but that Russia had built up "resistance" to such sanctions.

President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that any additional EU sanctions on Russia would simply hurt Europe more - and pointed out that Russia's economy grew at 4.3% in 2024 compared to euro zone growth of 0.9%.