Iran’s Raisi vows action against ‘hostile’ protests

Foreign-based rights groups have put the death toll among the protesters at more than 450.

Tehran:

President Ebrahim Raisi said on Tuesday that Iran “will show no mercy” towards “hostile” opponents of the Islamic republic, gripped by more than 100 days of protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.

The “riots”, as Tehran generally calls them, were sparked by the death in custody on September 16 of 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish Amini, after her arrest for an alleged violation of the strict dress code for women.

Addressing a crowd in Tehran, Raisi accused “hypocrites, monarchists and all anti-revolutionary currents.”

“The nation’s embrace is open to all those who were drawn in,” the ultra-conservative president told a funeral procession for unidentified soldiers who perished during his eight-year war in the 1980s with neighboring Iraq.

“The nation’s embrace is open to all, but we will show no mercy to those who are hostile.”

Iranian officials say hundreds of people have been killed, including members of the security forces, and thousands have been arrested across the country.

Foreign-based rights groups have put the death toll among the protesters at more than 450.

In early December, Iran executed two people in connection with the protests. The judiciary has said nine others have been sentenced to death, two of whom have been allowed to retry.

Activists say around a dozen other defendants have been charged with crimes for which they could receive the death penalty.

Iranian officials have accused hostile foreign powers, including the United States and some European countries, of stoking the unrest.

Their aim is to “divert the Islamic society from its high goals” by “spreading rumors and fracturing society,” Raisi said.

But foreign countries are “wrong” to think that would achieve their goals, Raisi argued, calling their moves miscalculated.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)