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| Photo Credit: AP. |
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded publicly on Monday to the biggest protests in Iran in years, breaking weeks of silence to condemn what he called “rioting” and accuse the United States and Israel of planning the protests.
The unrest,
ignited by the death of a young woman in the custody of Iran’s morality police,
are flaring up across the country for a third week despite government efforts
to crack down. On Monday, Iran shuttered its top technology university
following an hours-long standoff between students and the 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 “heartbroken” by the
death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody, calling it a “sad
incident.” However, he sharply condemned the protests as a foreign plot to
destabilize Iran, echoing authorities’ previous comments.
“This
rioting was planned,” he told a cadre of police students in Tehran. “These
riots and insecurities were designed by America and the Zionist regime, and
their employees.”
Meanwhile
Sharif University of Technology in Tehran announced that only doctoral students
would be allowed on campus until further notice following hours of turmoil on
Sunday evening, when witnesses said antigovernment protesters clashed with
hardline pro-establishment students.
The
witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said the
police kept hundreds of students holed up on campus and fired rounds of tear
gas to disperse the demonstrations. The university’s student association said
that police and plainclothes officers surrounded the school from all sides and
detained at least 300 students as protests rocked the campus after nightfall.
Plainclothes
officers beat a professor and several university employees, the association
reported. The state-run IRNA news agency sought to downplay the violent
standoff, reporting a “protest gathering ” took place and ended without
casualties.
Iran’s
latest protest movement, which has produced some of the nation’s most
widespread unrest in years, emerged as a response to Amini’s death after her
arrest for allegedly violating the country’s strict Islamic dress code.
However, it has grown into an open challenge to the Iranian leadership, with
chants of “Death to the dictator,” echoing from the streets and balconies after
dark.
The
demonstrations have tapped into a deep well of grievances in Iran, including
the country’s social restrictions, political repression and ailing economy long
strangled by American sanctions. Protests, with women burning their
state-mandated headscarves and crowds chanting for the downfall of the ruling clerics,
have continued in Tehran and far-flung provinces even as authorities have
restricted internet access to the outside world and blocked social media apps.
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, that are unnatural.”
Security
forces have responded with tear gas, metal pellets and in some cases live fire,
according to rights groups and widely shared footage, although the scope of the
crackdown remains unclear.
Iran’s state
TV has reported the death toll from violent clashes between protesters and the
security officers could be as high as 41. Rights groups have given higher death
counts, with London-based Amnesty International saying it has identified 52
victims, including five women and at least five children.
An untold
number of people have been apprehended, with local officials reporting at least
1,500 arrests. Security forces have picked up dozens of artists and activists
who have voiced support for the protests, as well as dozens of journalists in
the widening dragnet. Most recently on Sunday, authorities arrested Alborz
Nezami, a reporter at an economic newspaper in Tehran.
Khamenei
said that those who foment unrest to “sabotage” the country deserve harsh
prosecution and punishment. Young people who “come to the streets after
excitement after watching something on the internet,” he added, should be
“disciplined.”
Most of the
protesters appear to be under age 25, according to eyewitnesses — Iranians who
have grown up with global isolation and severe Western sanctions linked to
Iran’s nuclear program. Talks to revive the landmark 2015 nuclear deal have
stalled for months, fueling public discontent as Iran’s currency declines in
value and prices soar.
As the new
academic year began this week, students gathered in protest at universities
across Iran, according to videos widely shared on social media, chanting
slogans against the government and denouncing security forces’ clampdown on
demonstrators.
Universities
in major cities including Isfahan in central Iran, Mashhad in the northeast and
Kermanshah in the west have held protests featuring crowds of students
clapping, chanting and burning headscarves.
“Don’t call
it a protest, it’s a revolution now,” shouted students at Shahid Beheshti University
in the capital of Tehran, as women took off their hijabs and set them alight,
in protest over Iran’s law requiring women to cover their hair.
“Students
are awake, they hate the leadership!” chanted crowds of students at the
University of Mazandaran in the country’s north.
The eruption
of student anger has worried the Islamic Republic since at least 1999, when
security forces and supporters of hardline clerics attacked students protesting
media restrictions. That wave of student protests under former reformist
President Mohammad Khatami touched off the worst street battles since the 1979
Islamic Revolution.