City boy

Riots have broken out hours after the government introduced a new system to put a limit on how much petrol drivers can buy.

Although Iran has the world’s second largest reserves of conventional crude oil, it imports 40% of it’s petrol due to lack of investment in to the refinery industry.

More pictures here.

Update: It looks like this is proving to be the most unpopular of Ahmadinejad’s policies. You can take away the people’s freedom, but not their petrol!!

PJM Reports:

..more than 15 gas stations were set on fire in the early hours of morning. People have also attacked one city hall building in Tehran

Demonstrations have leaped to other Iranian cities like Karaj, Mashad, Tabriz, Bandar-Abbas, Ardabil and Kermanshah.

Cries of “Death to Ahmadinejad” were heard.

Videos can be seen here, here and a few here.

According to one blogger the state TV channels have happily announced that people are very calm and show videos of the roads that connect Tehran to outside cities! The online news agencies are also slowly removing pictures of the riots that they uploaded last night: ISNA, Mehr.