DUBAI (Reuters) – Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who accused the US of trying to destabilize the Islamic Republic, said Iranian cities are “safe and sound,” Iranian media reported Saturday on the 50th day of protests. .
Iranian clerical power struggled to quell protests that erupted in September after the death of young Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the deputy squad for violating women’s clothing laws.
Activists say hundreds of people, mostly protesters, have been killed. It is one of the strongest waves of protests in the country since the 1979 Islamic revolution, which overthrew the US-backed Shah.
As Iranian officials this week celebrated the anniversary of the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran by radical students, President Joe Biden supported the protesters, saying, “We will free Iran. They will be free very soon.”
“The Americans and other enemies have tried to destabilize Iran by implementing the same plans as Libya and Syria, but have failed,” Ebrahim Raisi told a group of students on Friday, Iranian news agencies reported.
A popular uprising in Libya led to NATO intervention in 2011 and the overthrow and assassination of the country’s leader, Muammar Gaddafi, by rebel fighters. In Syria, mass protests against Iran’s ally president Bashar al Assad were forcibly suppressed and the country plunged into a conflict that continues 11 years later.
Iranian cities are now “safe and sound,” said Ebrahim Raisi, promising to punish the unrest that has rocked the country.
According to militant news agency HRANA, 314 protesters were killed on Friday, including 47 minors. At least 14,170 people were arrested, including 392 students, during protests in 136 towns and villages and 134 universities. Some 38 members of the security forces were also killed.
Students from a dozen universities in Tehran and Karaj, west of the capital, the city of Rasht in the north, and Mashhad in the north-east, demonstrated on Saturday chanting slogans like “Woman, life, freedom,” according to videos. released by HRANA.
(Bureau de Dubai, edited by Dominic Evans; Version française Kate Entringer)
