File Photo: Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shows him addressing a meeting with students in Tehran. Photo: AFP
“Trump should know that world tyrants such as Pharaoh, Nimrod, Reza Shah and Mohammad Reza were brought down at the peak of their arrogance. He too will be brought down,” Khamenei said in remarks aired on state television.
He accused protesters of acting at the behest of foreign powers and said authorities would not tolerate what he described as “mercenaries for foreigners," according to state media.
Khamenei said Trump’s hands “are stained with the blood of more than a thousand Iranians," an apparent reference to Israel’s June war against the Islamic Republic, which the United States supported and later joined with strikes of its own.
“Everyone should know that the Islamic Republic came to power with the blood of hundreds of thousands of honourable people, and it will not back down in the face of saboteurs,” he was quoted as saying.
Iranian officials have rejected external criticism over the unrest and warned against what they described as foreign interference, saying the country has long faced economic pressure from sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.
Last week, Khamenei linked the protests to economic grievances while assigning responsibility for the currency crisis to foreign adversaries. “These gatherings were mainly by bazaar merchants,” he said, adding that sharp and unstable exchange-rate swings were “not natural” and were “the work of the enemy."
He also distinguished between protest and violence last week, saying, “Protest is legitimate, but protest is different from rioting.” He added that officials should speak with protesters, while saying, “Speaking with a rioter is pointless. Rioters must be put in their place.”
The Supreme National Security Council secretariat said on Friday that security forces and the judiciary would show no leniency toward what it called saboteurs, accusing foreign enemies of steering recent protests.
In a statement, it said the unrest had begun as protests over market instability but was later driven by what it described as plans by Israel, with support from the United States, to create insecurity.
“The presence of security and law enforcement forces is to prevent insecurity in the country,” the statement said, adding that these forces were acting alongside the people to counter what it called foreign-backed plots. It said: “Security forces and the judiciary will show no leniency toward saboteurs.”
Despite Iran’s government cutting off the nation from the internet and international telephone calls, short online videos shared by activists purported to show protesters chanting against Iran’s government around bonfires as debris littered the streets in the capital, Tehran, and other areas into Friday morning, according to the AP.
The full scope of the demonstrations couldn’t be immediately determined due to the communications blackout, though it represented yet another escalation in protests that began over Iran’s ailing economy and that has morphed into the most significant challenge to the government in several years. The protests have intensified steadily since beginning on 28 December.
The protests also represented the first test of whether the Iranian public could be swayed by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whose father fled Iran just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Pahlavi, who called for the protests Thursday night, similarly has called for demonstrations at 8 p.m. Friday.
The internet cut also appears to have taken Iran’s state-run and semiofficial news agencies offline as well. The state TV's acknowledgment of the cut at 8 am Friday represented the first official word about the demonstrations.
The movement, which originated with a shutdown on the Tehran bazaar on December 28 after the rial plunged to record lows, has spread nationwide and is now being marked by larger-scale demonstrations.
Local media and official statements have reported at least 21 people, including security forces, killed since the unrest began, according to an AFP tally.
On Wednesday, an Iranian police officer was stabbed to death west of Tehran "during efforts to control unrest," the Iranian Fars news agency said.
The semi-official news agency, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards, said that two policemen were shot and killed by armed individuals in the south-western town of Lordegan.
But raising its own toll, the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights claimed security forces had killed at least 45 protesters, including eight minors.
The NGO said Wednesday was the bloodiest day since the demonstrations began, with 13 protesters reported killed.
"The evidence shows that the scope of the crackdown is becoming more violent and more extensive every day," claimed IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, adding that hundreds more have been wounded and over 2,000 arrested.
These figures could not be independently confirmed.
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