MP and influential cleric Mahmoud Nabavian said current high prices could make the demonstrations much worse than those of 2009.
He told a meeting in the city of Khoramabad on Thursday: “In 2009 we were faced with people who were not hungry.
“But now our enemies want to use the country’s poorest people to rise up against the system.”
The ruling mullahs should be more worried about controlling food prices than their own infighting – because unlike 2009, Iran was now facing an internal economic war, he said.
He added: “They (those opposed to the regime) are considering February and April as times for public protests and are now urging people towards disorder. Maryam Rajavi [the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran] has also announced that her organization will direct the protests.”
A top leader of the Iranian regime’s Basij paramilitary forces had warned members in January that “the enemy is planning to mobilize the ‘barefooted and the miserable’ (the very poor) in the current year because clearing them off the streets will be more difficult [for us] than clearing away those who are politically motivated.”
IRGC Brigadier General Naser Shabani, in an interview with state-run ” Ghanoon ” newspaper on Monday, January 14, 2013, said: ” Our analysis is that various issues concerning the living conditions such as sanctions and mismanagement will be involved … and our assumption is that this time around the unrest will begin from the cities instead of Tehran, and it is possible that the issues concerning the living conditions will play major role and the poor and vulnerable will participate in future unrest”.