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Iran’s Khamenei Vows Revenge after Deadly Attack in Shiraz, Raisi Links Attack to Protests

Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi and Iranian Vice President Mohammad Mokhber during an inspection tour of the injured in Shiraz on Thursday, October 27, 2022. (IRNA)
Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi and Iranian Vice President Mohammad Mokhber during an inspection tour of the injured in Shiraz on Thursday, October 27, 2022. (IRNA)
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Iran’s Khamenei Vows Revenge after Deadly Attack in Shiraz, Raisi Links Attack to Protests

Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi and Iranian Vice President Mohammad Mokhber during an inspection tour of the injured in Shiraz on Thursday, October 27, 2022. (IRNA)
Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi and Iranian Vice President Mohammad Mokhber during an inspection tour of the injured in Shiraz on Thursday, October 27, 2022. (IRNA)

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei vowed on Thursday to retaliate against an attack claimed by ISIS on a shrine in the Iranian city of Shiraz on Wednesday, in which 15 people were killed.

The assault is expected to aggravate tensions amid widespread anti-government protests that erupted since the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, in police custody on Sept. 16.

Khamenei said the assailants “will surely be punished” and called on Iranians to unite.

“We all have a duty to deal with the enemy and its traitorous or ignorant agents,” Reuters quoted his statement, which was read on state television a day after the attack.

“All our people ranging from the security bodies and the judiciary body and activists in the field of media must be united against the wave that disregards and disrespects people’s lives, their security and sanctities,” he said.

Wednesday's incident came on the same day that Iranian security forces clashed with increasingly strident protesters marking 40 days since Amini's death.

In a speech Thursday, President Ebrahim Raisi described the ongoing protests as “riots” that allowed for the shooting to take place and affirmed Iran would respond, according to state media.

“The enemy wants the riots to pave the way for terrorist attacks. The enemy is always the enemy,” Raisi contended. “They go to the shrine of Shah Cheragh and open fire at innocent worshipers and then ISIS claims responsibility for the attack.”

Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said in a statement carried by state media that Iran will certainly retaliate.

“We will certainly not allow Iran’s national security and interests to be toyed with by terrorists and foreign meddlers who claim to defend human rights,” the FM stressed.

“This crime made the sinister intentions of the promoters of terror and violence in Iran completely clear. There is reliable information that the enemies have drawn up a multi-layered project to make Iran insecure.”

Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi blamed the protests sweeping Iran for paving the ground for the Shiraz attack.

The commander of the country’s Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, for his part, said Iran will retaliate.

“We firmly declare: The fire of revenge of the people of Iran will finally catch up with them and punish them for their shameful deeds,” Hossein Salami was quoted as saying by the semi-official Tasnim news agency on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

CCTV footage broadcast on state TV on Thursday showed the attacker entering the shrine after hiding an assault rifle in a bag and shooting as worshippers tried to flee and hide in corridors.

He was shown being arrested by police after being shot and injured. State media said he was not Iranian, but did not give his nationality.

Officials have called three days of mourning in the southern province of Fars, after the attack in the provincial capital of Shiraz.

Egypt, Lebanon, Qatar, Iraq and China condemned the attack.

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Despite Sharp Decline, Inflation Remains a Sore Point for Harris

Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a speech at The Alan Horwitz "Sixth Man" Center, a youth basketball facility, as she campaigns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a speech at The Alan Horwitz "Sixth Man" Center, a youth basketball facility, as she campaigns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
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Despite Sharp Decline, Inflation Remains a Sore Point for Harris

Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a speech at The Alan Horwitz "Sixth Man" Center, a youth basketball facility, as she campaigns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a speech at The Alan Horwitz "Sixth Man" Center, a youth basketball facility, as she campaigns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

For six months or so in 2021, as vaccines paved an economic reopening from the COVID-19 pandemic and fresh waves of federal benefits flowed to household bank accounts, President Joe Biden's administration reaped the benefit with an approval rating pinned above 50%.
It has been mired around 40% ever since, with the scarring impact of subsequently high inflation still cited by voters as a major issue even though the pace of price increases has declined, wages and the economy continue to grow, and the jobless rate remains low, Reuters said.
As good as the economy might seem across most major indicators, inflation that peaked at 9% more than two years ago has been hard for Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to outrun, and given former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump a cudgel that remains effective on the eve of the election even as inflation has dwindled to 2.4%.
"Inflation has not faded as an issue," said Justin McCarthy, a spokesperson for Gallup, the polling giant that fields monthly surveys that include an open-ended question, without lists or prompts, of what respondents feel is the "most important" issue facing them. Those citing inflation as the most serious issue has fallen from highs of around 20% during the peak inflation surge in 2022 to around 15% in recent polls, but that remains double the historic norm and is part of broader concern about the economy cited by more than 40% of respondents.
It's an area where Trump continues to hold a polling edge despite Harris' pledges to address issues like high housing costs or the "price gouging" she cites as a cause of high prices in the grocery aisle.
In a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, 68% of respondents in seven swing states said the cost of living was "on the wrong track," and 61% said the same about the economy. Half said Trump had "a better plan, policy or approach" to managing the economy compared with 37% for Harris, while on inflation Trump was favored 47% to 34%.
In-person voting concludes on Tuesday, with polls showing an overall tight race between Harris and Trump nationally and in the battleground states seen as determining the outcome.
The Biden administration and later the Harris campaign recognized early on the problem inflation posed.
Biden named one of his signature pieces of legislation the "Inflation Reduction Act," though much of it focused on subsidies for electric vehicles and clean energy. As rising rent and housing prices emerged as a particularly acute issue, they launched proposals that included capping rent increases, tax incentives for affordable housing construction, and downpayment help for first-time home buyers.
What they didn't publicize so much is how sticky a problem it would be for the households living through it.
Attitudes improved somewhat as inflation began to ease last year, but the change only went so far.
'UNAMBIGUOUSLY NEGATIVE'
Solutions have been offered by both campaigns, but inflation, the responsibility first and foremost of the Federal Reserve through its management of interest rates and credit conditions, is difficult for elected officials to address.
Republican President Richard Nixon tried the direct route by freezing wage and price increases for 90 days in 1971 and establishing a government panel to approve them after that. Inflation was 4.3% at the time and did fall below 4% in the summer of 1972 as Nixon campaigned for reelection.
But it soared that fall as the controls were eased, and following an embargo by Arab oil exporters in 1973 exceeded 12% by the end of 1974.
When inflation started rising during his term in office, Democratic President Jimmy Carter used a major address in 1978 to announce plans to limit government spending and call for voluntary wage and price limits from business. By the middle of his losing reelection bid against Republican Ronald Reagan prices were rising more than 14% annually.
After two recessions, a period of punishing interest rates imposed by the Fed and its firmer commitment to inflation control, price increases gradually settled close to the 2% level the central bank eventually adopted as its official target - and stayed there until the COVID-19 pandemic.
Economists have sparred over the exact reasons inflation took off beginning in 2021, and if that could have been prevented. But they generally agree on the broad mix. As the pandemic limited spending on in-person services, it also created deep backlogs in the manufacture and delivery of the goods, from bikes to appliances to automobiles, that were suddenly in high demand as a result of roughly $5 trillion in stimulus from the federal government.
The pandemic support began under Trump; Biden added more in a move some economists feel may have supercharged demand beyond what was needed.
It is a debate being litigated in hindsight and in the shadow of a health crisis that lingered long enough - new COVID variants were still suppressing in-person gatherings through 2021 - to even implicate the Fed. Inflation took off in 2021; the central bank did not raise rates until March 2022.
What doesn't seem in doubt is the impact on the public mood, something that shouldn't be a surprise.
Surveys about inflation have been consistent in finding that price shocks register deeply and are not quickly forgotten.
"Inflation significantly complicates household decision-making, which is seen as its most critical consequence," researchers Alberto Binetti of Bocconi University and Francesco Nuzzi and Stefanie Stantcheva of Harvard University concluded from the results of an online survey of 2,264 people conducted between March and May. "This complexity affects daily economic choices" and adds to economic uncertainty.
Nor do people seem to care much if, as has happened recently and Democrats have tried to emphasize, wages rise faster than prices.
"Inflation is perceived as an unambiguously negative phenomenon without any potential positive economic correlates," they found, with people expecting it to be fixed "without significant trade-offs."