Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said authorities “must break the back of the seditionists” involved in nationwide demonstrations that prompted a brutal government crackdown. According to rights groups, at least 3,000 people have been killed and over 20, 000 have been detained in the protests.
Khamanei blamed Trump
He said his country is holding US President Donald Trump responsible for inflicting casualties, damage, and slander on Iranians during the nationwide protests.
Khamenei called Trump a “criminal” and said that “the latest anti-Iran sedition was different in that the US president personally became involved”.
“We do not intend to lead the country to war, but we will not spare domestic criminals … worse than domestic criminals, international criminals, we will not spare them either,” he told supporters during an address marking a religious holiday.
“By God’s grace, the Iranian nation must break the back of the seditionists just as it broke the back of the sedition.”
Protests appear to have subsided after crackdown. The protesters reportedly waited for help from president Trump but the help never came, monitors and media said.
Reuters cited several residents in Tehran who reported that drones were flying over the capital and that there had been no signs of major protests on either Thursday or Friday.
A resident of a northern city on the Caspian Sea said the streets there also appeared calm.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene, including by threatening “very strong action” if Iran executed protesters.
But on Friday, in a social media post, he thanked Tehran’s leaders, saying they had called off mass hangings. Iran said there was “no plan to hang people”.
Death penalty
A cleric leading Friday prayers in Iran’s capital has called for the death penalty for the protesters detained in the nationwide crackdown.
Cleric Ahmad Khatami’s sermon carried by Iranian state radio sparked chants from those gathered for prayers, including: “Armed hypocrites should be put to death!”
Khatami, appointed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a member of both the country’s Assembly of Experts and Guardian Council, described the protesters as the “butlers” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald “Trump’s soldiers.” He insisted their plans “had imagined disintegrating the country”.
FRANCE 24
