Khamenei warned that prosecutions would continue and that neither domestic nor foreign actors would be spared.
By Vered Weiss, World Israel News
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday instructed authorities to intensify their response to nationwide protests, urging officials to crush what he called “seditionists” and directly accusing President Donald Trump of responsibility for deaths linked to the unrest.
In a speech broadcast on state television to mark a religious holiday, Khamenei for the first time publicly acknowledged the scale of casualties, saying the protests had resulted in “several thousand” deaths.
The admission marked a rare moment of candor from Iran’s top leadership since demonstrations began on December 28, initially over economic conditions and later expanding into demands for the removal of the clerical regime.
Khamenei placed blame squarely on the United States, portraying the protests as a foreign-driven operation. “In this revolt, the US president made remarks in person, encouraged seditious people to go ahead and said: ‘We do support you, we do support you militarily,’” he said. He added, “We do consider the US president a criminal, because of casualties and damages, because of accusations against the Iranian nation.”
Describing demonstrators as tools of Washington, Khamenei said they were “foot soldiers” acting on America’s behalf and accused them of destroying mosques and educational centers.
“Through hurting people, they killed several thousand of them,” he said. “By God’s grace, the Iranian nation must break the back of the seditionists just as it broke the back of the sedition.”
The supreme leader warned that prosecutions would continue and that neither domestic nor foreign actors would be spared.
“We do not release domestic offenders. Worse than domestic offenders, there are international offenders. We do not let them alone either,” he said, urging Iranian authorities to pursue cases linked to the unrest. At the same time, he sought to dismiss speculation of a broader conflict, saying, “We do not plan, we do not take the country toward war.”
Khamenei also claimed protesters had access to live ammunition imported from abroad, though he did not identify any countries allegedly involved.
The speech followed a shift in tone from Trump earlier in the week. After previously threatening military action if Iran continued killing protesters, the US president said he had been assured that the killings would stop.
Iran has since settled into an uneasy calm after a sweeping crackdown carried out under an internet blackout.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported at least 3,090 deaths, a figure that could not be independently verified. The reported toll surpasses that of any protest wave in Iran in decades and has drawn comparisons to the upheaval surrounding the 1979 revolution.
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