Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi condemned Wednesday the “chaos” sparked with the aid of using a wave of ladies-led protests over the loss of life of Mahsa Amini whilst withinside the custody of the Islamic republic’s morality police. “Those who took component withinside the riots have to be treated decisively, that is the call for of the humans,” stated Raisi in a televised interview. “People’s protection is the pink line of the Islamic republic of Iran and no person is authorized to interrupt the regulation and motive chaos,” he stated.
“The enemy has focused countrywide harmony and desires to pit humans in opposition to every other,” introduced the ultraconservative president, accusing Iran’s archfoe the US of stoking the unrest. Amini, a 22-year-vintage Kurdish woman, died on September 16, 3 days after she were arrested for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict regulations for ladies on carrying hijab headscarves and modest clothing.
Raisi stated the country had felt “grief and sorrow” over her loss of life, and that forensics and judiciary specialists could quickly gift a very last report, however additionally warned that “protests are special to riots”. “Woman, Life, Freedom!” the protesters have chanted in Iran’s largest demonstrations in nearly 3 years, wherein ladies have defiantly burned their headscarves and reduce off their hair.Their moves were matched in cohesion protests worldwide, with British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who spent six years in prison in Iran, reducing her hair in a video shared at the BBC Persian service.
Amini’s bereaved mother and father have filed a complaint, demanding “a radical investigation” and the discharge of “all films and photographs” of her whilst in custody, stated their attorney Saleh Nikbakht. An Iraq-primarily based totally cousin of Amini, who’s a member of a Kurdish nationalist organization, charged that she died after a “violent blow to the head” and that one officer had vowed to “instil the regulations in her and train her the way to put on the hijab and the way to dress”. As the Iranian protests have flared for 12 nights in a row, Iran’s police command vowed its forces could confront them “with all their might”, in a crackdown that one rights organization says has already killed as a minimum seventy six humans.
– ‘Cowardly Attacks’ –
Iran has blamed out of doors forces for the unrest, including “counter-revolutionary” Kurdish agencies primarily based totally in northern Iraq — throughout from Iran’s Kurdistan province Amini hailed from, and wherein the protests first flared. In a first-rate escalation, Iran on Wednesday released cross-border missile and drone moves that killed thirteen humans in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, after accusing Kurdish armed agencies primarily based totally there of fuelling the unrest.
The assaults have been condemned with the aid of using the UN venture in Iraq, and the federal authorities in Baghdad summoned the Iranian ambassador. The United States condemned the “brazen assaults” and Britain stated Iraq’s “indiscriminate bombardment” demonstrates “a repeated sample of Iranian destabilising interest withinside the region”. Germany slammed the “escalation… in opposition to the backdrop of home political protests in Iran” and rejected “tries to find the reasons of the Iranian protests withinside the neighbouring country”.
The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, one of the agencies focused, charged that “those cowardly assaults are going on at a time while the terrorist regime of Iran is not able to crack down on ongoing protests interior and silence the Kurdish and Iranian peoples’ civil resistance”.
– ‘Not A Big Deal’ –
The Iranian authorities — its economic system already hit with the aid of using sanctions over its nuclear programme — has sought to minimize the crisis. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian stated he advised Western diplomats at latest UN conferences that the protests have been “now no longer a large deal” for the steadiness of the clerical state.
“There isn’t going to be regime alternate in Iran. Don’t play to the feelings of the Iranian humans,” he advised National Public Radio in New York, additionally accusing “out of doors elements” of stirring up violence. Fars information organisation stated Tuesday “round 60” humans were killed on account that Amini’s loss of life. But the Oslo-primarily based totally organization Iran Human Rights stated the crackdown has killed as a minimum seventy six humans.
Iran’s reaction has drawn challenge from the United Nations and condemnation from the round the sector, with Germany and Spain summoning the Iranian ambassadors and the US and Canada saying new sanctions. The son of Iran’s past due shah, in an interview close to Washington with AFP, hailed the protests and entreated the sector to feature to the strain at the clerical leadership.
Reza Pahlavi, whose father changed into toppled withinside the 1979 Islamic Revolution, entreated extra education for a destiny Iranian machine this is secular and democratic. “It is simply in present day times, in my opinion, the primary revolution for the ladies, with the aid of using the ladies — with the guide of the Iranian men, sons, brothers and fathers,” stated Pahlavi.