Iran’s supreme leader signals harsher crackdown as protest movement swells | Iran

Iran’s supreme leader vowed on Friday that authorities “will not step back” in the face of growing protests and accused the United States of inciting demonstrations that began over economic conditions and have since turned into calls for political reform.

In his first speech since the protests began 13 days ago, religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei signaled that a greater crackdown was coming. He described the protesters as “vandals” and “saboteurs” and accused them of working on behalf of foreign agendas.

Protesters “destroyed their own streets to make the president of another country happy… because he said he would come to their aid,” Khamenei said, referring to Donald Trump, who has threatened American intervention in Iran if authorities kill protesters.

The US president suggested in an interview with Fox News on Thursday that the religious leader was preparing to flee Iran. “He wants to go somewhere. The situation is getting very bad,” Trump said.

In a separate speech, Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said the consequences for demonstrators would be “decisive, maximum and without any legal leniency.”

Protesters filled the streets of Iran throughout the night, despite a nationwide internet shutdown and escalating crackdowns.

The videos showed thousands of people marching through the streets of Iran’s capital, setting fire to a building belonging to Iran’s state broadcasters and hoisting a flag bearing the lion and sun emblem, which was the Iranian flag before the 1979 revolution that brought the current regime to power.

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late Shah of Iran, called for protests on Thursday evening. Footage shows protesters chanting slogans supporting Pahlavi, including in Khamenei’s hometown of Mashhad.

The protest movement, which is active in all provinces of Iran, is the most significant challenge to the authorities in recent years. The protests began on December 28 following the sudden depreciation of the country’s currency, but demands for political reform and an end to regime rule quickly emerged.

Protesters who went out Thursday night said they were subjected to violence; It’s part of what rights groups are already calling a brutal crackdown.

“They are targeting the eyes,” Maryam, a 25-year-old artist who joined protests in Tehran earlier on Friday, told the Guardian via text message. “Faraja [uniformed police]Basij [paramilitary militia] and even plainclothes death squads are advancing towards the crowd on motorcycles. “I don’t know how long the internet will work, but thousands of us are on the streets and I’m afraid to face hundreds of deaths.”

According to the US-based Human Rights Activists news agency, at least 42 people were killed and more than 2,270 people were detained in the violence surrounding the protests.

Iranian state media first acknowledged the protests on Friday, portraying the unrest as violent riots incited by “terrorist agents” of the United States and Israel. State television channels projected an air of normalcy by airing footage of pro-government demonstrations and insisting that life continued as usual for most Iranians.

State media claimed that Israel had captured Mossad agents who infiltrated Iran’s protest movements, while Iran-owned Press TV reported that a Mossad cell was planning “a fake killing operation aimed at blaming the state for civilian deaths.”

Authorities cut off the internet to Iran at around 8pm local time (1630 GMT) on Thursday night, around the same time Pahlavi called for a protest. It was difficult to fully understand what was happening in Iran and the true extent of the protests due to data and phone lines being cut.

Demonstrators appeared to respond to Pahlavi’s call at 8 p.m., chanting anti-government slogans and calling for the return of the exiled crown prince. Elements of the movement, so far largely leaderless, have rallied around the figure, but it was unclear whether the chants supported the crown prince or the pre-1979 administration.

“I am proud of each of you who conquered the streets in Iran on Thursday night,” Pahlavi said in his post on X. “I know that you will not leave the streets despite the internet shutdown and communication. Be sure that victory will be yours!”

Pahlavi called for another demonstration at 8pm on Friday night; This would be another test of the exiled figure’s popularity and the durability of the protests in the face of pressure from the authorities.

Pahlavi’s organization also claimed that “tens of thousands” of security officers had signaled their intention to defect through a platform it set up, and that the organization had been “swamped” by the officers’ demands.

The crackdown appeared to have further strengthened the resolve of the protesters, many of whom described scenes of defiance in which rocks were thrown at police officers, forcing them to retreat.

Ali, a 21-year-old student in Tehran, said in a text message: “Fuck them! The cowards abandoned their vehicles and ran away! We took over the streets tonight. We will also burn the pickup trucks they used to drag our citizens and kidnap our sisters from the streets. The country is ours!”

Anger at the regime and the clergy who form the backbone of the theocracy appeared to boil over throughout the week. On Wednesday, a group of people stormed a Shiite seminary in the city of Gonabad, beating staff with sticks and damaging the facility, according to seminary director Ismail Tavakoli.

Another protester said unarmed protesters confronted riot police and threw rocks in response to bullets fired by officers.

“They are being rude and saying we are on the same side as the Israelis and Americans,” said Farzad, 37, a street vendor in Iran’s northern city of Rasht. “They call us traitors. They are the ones who betrayed the feeling of being Iranian.”