IRAN: Chinese-made armored anti-riot trucks, equipped with plows, may arrive in Tehran
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An opposition news website is reporting that Iran has imported high-tech armored anti-riot vehicles equipped with water cannons that can douse people with boiling water or teargas.
The U.S.-based Persian-language news website Rahesabz, or Green Path, posted a photograph of what it described as a photograph of two of the trucks arriving at the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas in the south.
The website said the vehicles were a rush order from their manufacturers in China, Dalian Eagle-Sky, according to the blogger Sohrebestan.
(See a translation of his post in English at the blog Persian2English.)
With an alleged price of $650,000 a unit, the 25-ton trucks each hold 2,640 gallons of water, which can shoot hot or cold water at a distance of up 220 feet.
They can also shoot tear gas, burning chemicals or paint stored in three 26-gallon containers.
It includes a plow, which can presumably demolish makeshift barriers placed on streets by protesters, or even the demonstrators themselves.
Iranian protesters torched police vehicles and motorcycles during anti-government riots last weekend, when police trucks allegedly ran over at least one demonstrator, as shown in the video below.
Iranian officials say the video footage was fake, doctored by the West to make Iran look bad.
Just hours after the cellphone camera photo was posted today, Iranian protest movement supporters began discussing what to do about them if they are employed on city streets.
‘I would suggest luring them into narrow streets or between obstacles that are too narrow for them to turn around in, and then trapping them there from the front and behind with cars or barriers of some sort,’ wrote one commentator who goes by the pseudonym Coyote. ‘Then come at them from the areas where the cannons cannot point, preferably after the crews have abandoned them, and set them on fire from the inside. Burn their guts.’
Another commentator, Dragoon, noted that Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi also employed anti-riot vehicles to put down protesters during the months leading up to the 1979 revolution.
Top photo: An amateur picture purportedly shows new anti-riot vehicles arriving in Iran. Credit: Rahesabz. Bottom photo: The 25-ton truck as promoted on the website of its Chinese manufacturer. Video: Police vehicles ram protesters on the streets of Tehran. Credit: YouTube