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Iran’s supreme leader insisted Saturday that “rioters must be put in their place” after a week of protests that have shaken the Islamic Republic, likely giving security forces a green light to aggressively put down the demonstrations.
The first comments by 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei come as violence surrounding the demonstrations sparked by Iran’s ailing economy has killed at least 10 people. The protests show no sign of stopping and follow U.S. President Donald Trump’s warning Iran on Friday that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States “will come to their rescue.”
While it remains unclear how and if Trump will intervene, his comments sparked an immediate, angry response, with officials within the theocracy threatening to target American troops in the Mideast. They also take on new importance after Trump said on Saturday that the U.S. military captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran.
The protests have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations. However, the protests have yet to be as widespread and intense as those surrounding the death of Amini, who was detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.
State television aired remarks by Khamenei to an audience in Tehran that sought to separate the concerns of protesting Iranians upset about the rial’s collapse from “rioters.”
In Iran, protests over the soaring cost of living have spread to several universities. Students are joining shopkeepers and merchants to demand an end to the rule of the current government. As Pinki Wong reports, some Iranians in Vancouver are worried about what will unfold in the days ahead.
“We talk to protesters, the officials must talk to them,” Khamenei said. “But there is no benefit to talking to rioters. Rioters must be put in their place.”
He also reiterated a claim constantly made by officials in Iran that foreign powers like Israel or the U.S. were pushing the protests, without offering any evidence. He also blamed “the enemy” for Iran’s collapsing rial.
“A bunch of people incited or hired by the enemy are getting behind the tradesmen and shopkeepers and chanting slogans against Islam, Iran and the Islamic Republic,” he said. “This is what matters most.”
The ranks of the paramilitary Iranian Revolutionary Guards include the all-volunteer Basij force, whose motorcycle-riding members have violently put down protests like the 2009 Green Movement and the 2022 demonstrations. The Guards answer only to Khamenei.
Hardline officials within Iran are believed to have been pushing for a more aggressive response to the demonstrations as President Masoud Pezeshkian has sought talks to address protesters’ demands.
But bloody security crackdowns often follow such protests. Protests over a gasoline price hike in 2019 reportedly saw more than 300 people killed. A crackdown on the Amini protests in 2022, which lasted for months, killed more than 500 people and saw more than 22,000 detained.
“Iran has no organized domestic opposition; protesters are likely acting spontaneously,” the Eurasia Group said in an analysis on Friday. “While protests could continue or grow larger (particularly as Iran’s economic outlook remains dire), the regime retains a large security apparatus and would likely suppress such dissent without losing control of the country.”
Deaths overnight in protests
Two deaths overnight into Saturday involved a new level of violence. In Qom, home to the country’s major Shiite seminaries, a grenade exploded, killing a man, the state-owned IRAN newspaper reported. It quoted security officials alleging the man was carrying the grenade to attack people in the city, some 130 kilometres south of the capital, Tehran.
Online videos from Qom purportedly showed fires in the street overnight.
The second death happened in the town of Harsin, some 370 kilometres southwest of Tehran. There, the newspaper said, a member of the Basij, the all-volunteer arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, died in a gun and knife attack in the town in Kermanshah province.
Demonstrations have reached more than 100 locations in 22 of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported.
The protests, taking root in economic issues, have heard demonstrators chant against Iran’s theocracy as well. Tehran has had little luck in propping up its economy in the months since its June war with Israel in which the U.S. also bombed Iranian nuclear sites in Iran.
Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its nuclear program to ease sanctions. However, those talks have yet to happen, as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned Tehran against reconstituting the program.
