Iran's mullahs, or the Shia jurists usually seen in flowing robes and turban, may be in charge of Iran, but they're increasingly hesitant to tread its streets.

Their fears follow a recent spate of attacks on regime supporters including a gun killing, possibly related to public anger with the Islamic regime and its violent suppression of mass protests late in 2022.

On May 1, the judiciary chief Gholam Hussein Mohseni-Ejei urged a swift and firm response, while another cleric, former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, advised those mullahs preaching at Friday congregational prayers to take self-defense classes.

The incidents include the shooting death on April 26 of a senior cleric, Abbas Ali Suleimani, in a bank in the northern city of Babolsar, one of several attempts to run over clerics or seminarians, a Basiji militiaman killed in Sabzevar in north-eastern Iran and a police commander shot dead in Saravan in the province of Sistan-Baluchestan, on April 30. On May 6, another mullah was reported as stabbed and injured in the district of Ahmadabad in the central Markazi province.