A past anti-regime protest in Iran. Photo: Screenshot.

A top Iranian official called for calm on Sunday after anti-regime protests in a southern city turned violent overnight with reports of police shooting at demonstrators who attacked banks and public buildings.

“Our effort is to bring these protests to an end as soon as possible with restraint from police and the cooperation of authorities, but if the opposite happens, the judiciary and law enforcement forces will carry out their duties,” Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.

Shots could be heard on videos circulated on social media from the protests in Khorramshahr, which has been the scene of demonstrations for the past three days, along with the nearby city of Abadan.

According to an Al Arabiya report, at least four demonstrators have been killed.

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February 7, 2021 9:34 am

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At a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the current situation in Iran, stating, “The Iranian regime is feeling very well the coming reimposition of the economic sanctions against it. The Iranian economy is at a low point. One needs to see the data in order to believe. Iran is investing billions of dollars in financing terrorism in the region and around the world, and in aggression in the region, instead of investing them in the Iranian people, and the Iranian people are protesting this, and rightly so.”

“The change in the US position toward Iran is a strategic turnaround in Israel’s situation,” the prime minister went on to say. “I believed that this change was possible when I stood up against the entire world in order to cancel this bad agreement. Our goal is what it always has been: To prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons and to break the cash machine that the agreement gave Iran, which finances its aggression in the region including Syria.”

“At a time when the US is economically striking at the Iranian regime, we are working to prevent Iranian forces and those of its proxies from establishing a military presence anywhere in Syria, and we will continue to do so,” Netanyahu added.

A number of Iran experts told The Algemeiner last week Western nations could “do a lot” to help anti-regime protesters who recently returned to the streets of the Islamic Republic.

Videos posted on social media last Monday showed demonstrators in Tehran chanting, “Death to Palestine!” — a slogan highlighting discontent with the Iranian regime’s expenditures on terrorist proxy groups throughout the Middle East, including Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.