by DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly responded Monday to Iran’s biggest protests in years, breaking weeks of silence to condemn what he called “riots” and blame the United States and Israel that they were planning the protests.
The unrest, sparked by the death of a young woman detained by Iran’s morality police, has been raging across the country for a third week despite government efforts to quell it.
On Monday, Iran closed its top technological university after an hours-long standoff between students and police that turned the prestigious institution into the latest flashpoint of protests and ended with hundreds of young people arrested.
Speaking to a cadre of police students in Tehran, Khamenei said he was “deeply devastated” by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody, calling it a “tragic incident”. But he characterized the protests as a foreign plot to destabilize Iran, echoing earlier comments by authorities.
“This rebellion was planned,” he said. “These riots and insecurities were planned by America and the Zionist regime and their employees.”
Office of Iran’s Supreme Leader via The Associated Press
Meanwhile, Sharif University of Technology in Tehran announced that only doctoral students would be allowed on campus until further notice after hours of unrest on Sunday, when witnesses said anti-government protesters clashed with pro-establishment students.
The witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said police detained hundreds of students on campus and fired tear gas to break up the protests. The student union said plainclothes police surrounded the school on all sides as the protests ravaged the campus after nightfall and arrested at least 300 students.
Plainclothes officers beat a professor and several university employees, the union added.
State news agency IRNA tried to downplay the violent confrontation, saying a “protest rally” took place without casualties. But it also said police had released 30 students from custody, acknowledging that many had been caught in the dragnet by mistake as they tried to go home.
The crackdown sparked protests on Monday at home and abroad.
“Suppose we strike and arrest, is that the solution?” asked a columnist in the daily Jomhouri Eslami, a hardline Iranian newspaper. “Is this productive?”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock condemned the “regime’s brutal violence” at Sharif University as “an expression of sheer fear of the power of education and freedom”.
“The courage of the Iranians is incredible,” he said.
Iran’s latest protest movement, which has sparked some of the nation’s most widespread unrest in years, emerged in response to Amini’s death after she was arrested for allegedly violating the country’s strict Islamic dress code. It has since evolved into an open challenge to Iran’s leadership, with women burning their headscarves and chants of “Death to the dictator” echoing from the streets and balconies after dark.
The protests tapped a deep well of grievances in Iran, including the country’s social restrictions, political repression and a struggling economy strangled by US sanctions. The unrest has continued in Tehran and far-flung provinces, even as authorities have cut off internet access and blocked social media apps.
Protests have also spread across the Middle East and into Europe and North America. Thousands poured into the streets of Los Angeles to show solidarity. Police clashed with protesters outside Iran’s embassies in London and Athens. The crowds chanted “Woman! ZOE! Freedom!” in Paris.
In his remarks on Monday, Khamenei condemned scenes of protesters ripping off their hijabs and setting fire to mosques, banks and police cars as “actions that are not normal, unnatural”. He warned that “those who incite unrest to sabotage the Islamic Republic deserve harsh prosecution and punishment.”
Security forces responded with tear gas, metal pellets and in some cases live fire, according to rights groups and widely shared material, though the extent of the crackdown remains unclear.
Iran’s state television said the death toll from violent clashes between protesters and security officers could reach 41. Rights groups have given higher death tolls, with London-based Amnesty International saying it has identified 52 victims. .
An untold number of people have been arrested, with local officials reporting at least 1,500 arrests. Security forces have arrested artists who have expressed their support for the protests and dozens of journalists. Most recently on Sunday, authorities arrested Alborz Nezami, a journalist at a financial newspaper in Tehran.
Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images
Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said nine foreigners were arrested over the protests. A 30-year-old Italian traveler named Alessia Piperno called her parents on Sunday to say she had been arrested, her father Alberto Piperno told Italy’s ANSA news agency.
“We are very concerned,” he said. “The situation is not good”
Most of the protesters appear to be under the age of 25, according to witnesses – Iranians who have grown up knowing little but global isolation and tough Western sanctions tied to Iran’s nuclear program. Talks to revive the landmark 2015 nuclear deal have stalled for months, fueling discontent as Iran’s currency depreciates and prices soar.
A Tehran-based university professor, Shahindokht Kharazmi, said the new generation has found unpredictable ways to defy the authorities.
“The (young protesters) have learned strategy from video games and play to win,” Kharazmi told the pro-reform Etemad newspaper. “There is no such thing as defeat for them.”
As the new academic year began this week, students at universities in major cities across Iran gathered in protest, according to videos widely shared on social media, clapping, chanting anti-government slogans and waving headscarves.
Outbursts of student anger have worried the Islamic Republic since at least 1999, when security forces and supporters of hardline clerics attacked students protesting media restrictions. This wave of student protests under former reformist president Mohammad Khatami sparked the worst street fighting since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“Don’t call it a protest, it’s a revolution now,” chanted students at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, as women set fire to their hijabs.
“The students are awake, they hate the leadership!” shouted crowds at the University of Mazandaran in the north of the country.
Riot police have been out in force, patrolling the streets near universities on motorbikes.
