 "‘Rioters must be put in their place,’ says Iran's Khamenei as death toll rises to at least 10")
Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday addressed the protests rattling his nation, insisting that “rioters must be put in their place.”
The remarks by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were seen as potentially signalling approval for security forces to take a tougher stance against demonstrations that have continued for a week.
The unrest has been driven by Iran’s struggling economy, with the rial now trading at roughly 1.4 million to the US dollar.
Addressing a gathering in Tehran, Khamenei said officials should engage in dialogue with protesters, but drew a distinction with those he labelled rioters. “We talk to protesters, and officials must talk to them,” he said. “However, there is no value in talking to rioters. Rioters must be dealt with.”
Khamenei on Saturday acknowledged the economic demands of Iranian protesters, while warning against what he described as rioting.
“The president and high-ranking officials are working to resolve” the economic difficulties in the sanctions-battered country, Khamenei said in a speech marking a Shiite holiday.
“The shopkeepers have protested against this situation and that is completely fair,” he added, while warning that “rioters… must be put in their place”.
Violence surrounding protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic’s ailing economy killed two other people, authorities said Saturday, raising the death toll in the demonstrations to at least 10 as they showed no signs of stopping.
The new deaths follow US President Donald Trump 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 from officials within the theocracy threatening to target American troops in the Mideast.
Quick Reads
View AllThe weeklong 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.
The 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 there, the state-owned IRAN newspaper reported. It quoted security officials alleging the man carried the grenade to attack people in the city, some 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of the capital, Tehran.
With inputs from agencies
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