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.<\/p>\n
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called protesters “vandals” and “saboteurs” in his first comments on the protests since January 3. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
The demonstrations represent one of the biggest challenges yet to the Islamic republic in its over four-and-a-half decades of existence.<\/p>\n
\u2018Stained with blood\u2019<\/p>\n
The protests late on 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\u2019s strict dress code.<\/p>\n
But Khamenei struck a defiant tone in his first comments on the escalating protests since January 3, calling the demonstrators \u201cvandals\u201d and \u201csaboteurs\u201d, in a speech broadcast on state TV.<\/p>\n
Khamenei said US President Donald Trump\u2019s hands \u201care stained with the blood of more than a thousand Iranians\u201d, in apparent reference to Israel\u2019s June war against the Islamic republic which the US supported and joined with strikes of its own.<\/p>\n
He predicted the \u201carrogant\u201d US leader would be \u201coverthrown\u201d like the imperial dynasty that ruled Iran up to the 1979 revolution.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast night in Tehran, a bunch of vandals came and destroyed a building that belongs to them to please the US president,\u201d he said in an address to supporters, as men and women in the audience chanted the mantra of \u201cdeath to America\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump said late on Thursday that \u201centhusiasm to overturn that regime is incredible\u201d and warned that if the Iranian authorities responded by killing protesters, \u201cwe\u2019re going to hit them very hard. We\u2019re ready to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the Fox News interview, Trump went as far as to suggest 86-year-old Khamenei may be looking to leave Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s looking to go someplace,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, on a visit to Lebanon, on Friday accused Washington and Israel of \u201cdirectly intervening\u201d to try to \u201ctransform the peaceful protests into divisive and violent ones\u201d.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u2018Red line\u2019<\/p>\n
The son of the Shah of Iran ousted by the 1979 Islamic Revolution, US-based Reza Pahlavi, said the rallies showed how \u201ca massive crowd forces the repressive forces to retreat\u201d.<\/p>\n
But judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei warned that punishment of \u201crioters\u201d would be \u201cdecisive, the maximum and without any legal leniency\u201d.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The intelligence branch of the Revolutionary Guards, the security force entrusted with ensuring the preservation of the Islamic republic, said the \u201ccontinuation of this situation is unacceptable\u201d and protecting the revolution was its \u201cred line\u201d.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
There were few videos emerging of other new protest actions late on Friday, with some sources blaming this on the internet shutdown.<\/p>\n
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a joint statement that since the start of the protests on December 28, security forces \u201chave unlawfully used rifles, shotguns loaded with metal pellets, water cannon, tear gas and beatings to disperse, intimidate and punish largely peaceful protesters\u201d.<\/p>\n
– Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights, raising a previous toll of 45 issued the day earlier, said at least…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[806,29893,134785,1863,6326,134787,12639,690,6097,6183,1872,42,359,16609,126523,134786,134784,13489,101,43,5202,102041,13316,23269,7538,30246,1361,40,38,41,39,44977,53865,36298,6730,1530],"class_list":["post-225541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-as","tag-authorities","tag-ayatollah","tag-back","tag-biggest","tag-blackout","tag-crackdown","tag-dead","tag-down","tag-dozens","tag-face","tag-headlines","tag-internet","tag-iran","tag-irans","tag-islamic","tag-khamenei","tag-leader","tag-left","tag-news","tag-part","tag-pressed","tag-protests","tag-republic","tag-shutdown","tag-supreme","tag-that","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-vowed","tag-vows","tag-widens","tag-would","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}