Senior Iranian cleric calls for protester executions in defiance of Trump claims | Iran
A senior Iranian cleric has called for the execution of protesters after a brutal crackdown in Iran swelled the death toll and crushed the nationwide protest movement.
In a sermon on Friday, Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami attacked demonstrators, saying that “armed hypocrites should be killed.” He called the protesters “servants” and “soldiers” of Israel and the United States and vowed that neither country should “expect peace.”
Khatami, a member of the Guardian Council and a senior member of the Assembly of Experts that appoints the supreme leader, is a strict and influential cleric in Iran.
The speech was a striking contrast to comments this week by US President Donald Trump, who postponed a military strike on Iran and told reporters that Iranian officials had agreed to halt the execution of protesters.
On Friday night, Trump thanked Iran for halting the execution of 800 protesters, but it was unclear where he got those figures.
Despite the apparent gratitude, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday called Trump “guilty” for his “personal” involvement in the protests and promised further punishment for the protesters.
Khamenei said, “With God’s permission, the Iranian nation should break the backs of the seditionists, just as they broke the backs of discord.”.
Human rights groups said the crackdown on protesters continued, with more than 3,090 people killed in the unrest and nearly 4,000 more cases awaiting investigation. According to the Human Rights Activists news agency. More than 22,100 people were arrested during the protests, leading to fears that detainees would be mistreated.
The protests, which lasted two and a half weeks, began on December 28 when merchants took to the streets in Tehran in response to the sudden drop in the value of the rial. Protests spread and demands expanded to include calls for an end to the country’s government; This created the most serious and deadliest unrest the country has seen since the 1979 revolution.
Brutal suppression of demonstrations by authorities Human Rights Watch said on Friday: It largely took people off the streets, including “mass killings of protesters.”
By immediately easing the unrest, authorities were making a public statement that they would punish those who participated in what they described as a foreign-backed conspiracy to destabilize the country.
Khatami in his Friday sermonHe claimed that 350 mosques, 126 places of worship and 20 other places of worship were damaged by protesters. He also said 400 hospitals, 106 ambulances, 71 fire trucks and 50 emergency vehicles were damaged.
It was unclear what the consequences of the protest movement would be or whether it would flare up again in the coming days. Iran remains cut off from the rest of the world as authorities maintain an internet blackout that has lasted more than a week.
Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran, who became one of the leading voices of the opposition during the protests, continued the protests. call to overthrow the government On Friday, he called on Trump to intervene.
“I believe that the President is a man of his word,” Pahlavi said, adding: “Whether action is taken or not, we as Iranians do not have the option of continuing the struggle.”
