Zürcher Nachrichten - Defiant Khamenei slams protests as Iran presses internet shutdown

Protests have taken place across Iran for 13 days in a movement sparked by anger over the rising cost of living that is now marked by calls for the end of the clerical system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution that ousted the pro-Western shah.

The biggest protests seen yet in the movement took place late Thursday with large crowds marching through Tehran chanting slogans including "death to the dictator".

Internet monitor Netblocks said authorities had now imposed a "nationwide internet shutdown" for the last 24 hours that was violating the rights of Iranians and "masking regime violence".

In a separate statement, Amnesty International said the "blanket internet shutdown" aims to "hide the true extent of the grave human rights violations and crimes under international law they are carrying out to crush" the protests.

Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights, raising a previous toll of 45 issued the day earlier, said at least 51 protesters, including nine children under the age of 18, have been killed by security forces and hundreds more injured.

The demonstrations represent one of the biggest challenges yet to the Islamic republic in its over four-and-a-half decades of existence.

- 'Stained with blood' -

The protests late Thursday were the biggest in Iran since 2022-2023 rallies nationwide sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini after she was arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic republic's strict dress code.

But Khamenei struck a defiant tone in his first comments on the escalating protests since January 3, calling the demonstrators "vandals" and "saboteurs", in a speech broadcast on state TV.

Khamenei said US President Donald Trump's hands "are stained with the blood of more than a thousand Iranians", in apparent reference to Israel's June war against the Islamic republic which the US supported and joined with strikes of its own.

He predicted the "arrogant" US leader would be "overthrown" like the imperial dynasty that ruled Iran up to the 1979 revolution.

"Last night in Tehran, a bunch of vandals came and destroyed a building that belongs to them to please the US president," he said in an address to supporters, as men and women in the audience chanted the mantra of "death to America".

"Everyone knows the Islamic republic came to power with the blood of hundreds of thousands of honourable people, it will not back down in the face of saboteurs."

Trump said late Thursday that "enthusiasm to overturn that regime is incredible" and warned that if the Iranian authorities responded by killing protesters, "we're going to hit them very hard. We're ready to do it."

In the Fox News interview, Trump went as far as to suggest 86-year-old Khamenei may be looking to leave Iran.

"He's looking to go someplace," he said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, on a visit to Lebanon, on Friday accused Washington and Israel of "directly intervening" to try to "transform the peaceful protests into divisive and violent ones".

- 'Red line' -

The son of the shah of Iran ousted by the 1979 Islamic Revolution, US-based Reza Pahlavi, urged Trump to intervene to help the protesters, adding "the people will be on the streets again in an hour".

But judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei warned that punishment of "rioters" would be "decisive, the maximum and without any legal leniency".

Quoted by state television, he said a district prosecutor in the town of Esfarayen in eastern Iran and several members of the security forces had been killed late Thursday in the protests.

The intelligence branch of the Revolutionary Guards, the security force entrusted with ensuring the preservation of the Islamic republic, said the "continuation of this situation is unacceptable" and protecting the revolution was its "red line".

Meanwhile, Iranian state television on Friday broadcast images of thousands of people attending counter-protests and brandishing slogans in favour of the authorities in some Iranian cities.

The Haalvsh rights group, which focuses on the Baluch Sunni minority in the southeast, said security forces fired on protesters in Zahedan, the main city of Sistan-Baluchistan province, after Friday prayers, causing an unspecified number of casualties.

There were few videos emerging of other new protest actions late Friday, with some sources blaming this on the internet shutdown.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a joint statement that since the start of the protests on December 28, security forces "have unlawfully used rifles, shotguns loaded with metal pellets, water cannon, tear gas and beatings to disperse, intimidate and punish largely peaceful protesters".

M.J.Baumann--NZN