TEHRAN – Mohammad Qasim Osmani, a lawmaker from Bukan, said during the parliament’s special closed-door meeting on Sunday, top security officials assured lawmakers that security and order have been restored after days of protests in some cities and towns.

Osmani said the intelligence and interior ministers as well as the deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps briefed the parliament on the protests, ISNA reported.

According to MP Jalal Mirzaee, during the session Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli elaborated on the pros and cons of the protests by presenting statistics, and Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi pointed to the root causes of the phenomenon. 

The protest rallies, which turned violent in some cases, first started on December 28 in Mashhad and then spread to some other cities. They died down after a week.

Gholamreza Heydari, a reformist lawmaker in Tehran, also told parliament's ICANA website that "the security officials confirmed that most of those arrested have been released." 

Mohammad Reza Kachouie, another deputy, also said most of those detained were unemployed people, "without university degrees".

MH/PA