Protesters should not take to the streets ”.
On the 29th, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards warned anti-government protesters that “today will be the last day of riots”, raising concerns about the imminent bloody mass repression.
According to the Iranian state news agency IRNA, the commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, Hossein Salami, said at the funeral of the victims of the shooting in the central city of Shiraz: “Protesters should not go out on the streets”. General Salami said, “This is a plan devised by the United States White House and the Zionist regime (Israel)” and said, “Don’t sell your honor to the United States.”
At least 15 people were killed in an indiscriminate shooting in a mosque in Shiraz, where a funeral was held on the 26th. The Islamic State (IS), a Sunni extremist militant group, claimed responsibility for the incident. The Iranian government accuses protesters of failing to prevent terrorism by deploying large-scale military and police forces on the same day to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the death of Masa Amini, who mysteriously died after being arrested for not wearing the hijab.
In a joint statement with the Iranian intelligence service on the 28th, the Revolutionary Guards claimed that two Iranian journalists who initially reported on Amini’s mysterious death were CIA spies, the Washington Post reported. If found guilty of foreign espionage in Iran, he can carry up to the death penalty.
As fears of a bloody large-scale crackdown on anti-government protesters grow, the international community is also raising the bar. Reuters reported on the 28th that the United States and Albania will hold an unofficial meeting of the United Nations Security Council next week on Iran’s anti-government protests. The United States is reportedly planning to call for an independent investigation into the Iranian government’s human rights violations at the Security Council.
The reporter Jung-soo Hong [email protected]
