Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday insisted the Islamic republic would “not back down” in the face of protests after the biggest rallies yet in an almost two-week movement sparked by anger over the rising cost of living.
Chanting slogans including “death to the dictator” and setting fire to official buildings, crowds of people opposed to the clerical establishment marched through major cities late Thursday.
Internet monitor Netblocks said authorities had imposed a total connectivity blackout and added early Friday that the country has “now been offline for 12 hours... in an attempt to suppress sweeping protests”.
The demonstrations represent one of the biggest challenges yet to the Islamic republic in its over four-and-a-half decades of existence, with protesters openly calling for an end to its theocratic rule.
But Khamenei struck a defiant tone in his first comments on the protests that have been escalating since January 3, calling the demonstrators “vandals” and “saboteurs”, in a speech broadcast on state TV.
Khamenei said US President Donald Trump’s hands “are stained with the blood of more than a thousand Iranians”, in apparent reference to Israel’s June war against the Islamic republic which the US supported and joined with strikes of its own.
He predicted the “arrogant” US leader would be “overthrown” like the imperial dynasty that ruled Iran up to the 1979 revolution.
“Last night in Tehran, a bunch of vandals came and destroyed a building that belongs to them to please the US president,” he said in an address to supporters, as men and women in the audience chanted the mantra of “death to America”.
“Everyone knows the Islamic republic came to power with the blood of hundreds of thousands of honourable people, it will not back down in the face of saboteurs,” he added.
Trump said late Thursday that “enthusiasm to overturn that regime is incredible” and warned that if the Iranian authorities responded by killing protesters, “we’re going to hit them very hard. We’re ready to do it.”
AFP has verified videos showing crowds of people, as well as vehicles honking in support, filling a part of the vast Ayatollah Kashani Boulevard late on Thursday.
The crowd could be heard chanting “death to the dictator” in reference to Khamenei, 86, who has ruled the Islamic republic since 1989.
Other videos showed significant protests in other cities, including Tabriz in the north and the holy city of Mashhad in the east, as well as the Kurdish-populated west of the country, including the regional hub Kermanshah.
Several videos showed protesters setting fire to the entrance to the regional branch of state television in the central city of Isfahan. It was not immediately possible to verify the images.
Flames were also seen in the governor’s building in Shazand, the capital of Markazi province in central Iran, after protesters gathered outside, other videos showed.
Meanwhile, Iranian state TV on Friday broadcast images of thousands of people attending counter-protests and brandishing slogans in favour of the authorities in some Iranian cities.
It also broadcast images of damage it said was caused, with Tehran’s mayor quoted as saying over 42 buses, public vehicles and ambulances were set alight along with 10 public buildings.
The protests late Thursday were the biggest in Iran since 2022-2023 rallies nationwide sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic republic’s strict dress code.
Rights groups have accused authorities of firing on protesters in the current demonstrations, killing at least 45 people according to Norway-based rights group Iran Human Rights (IHR).
The latest videos from Tehran did not show intervention by security forces, but Iran’s national security council said in a written statement Friday that the judiciary and security forces would show “no compromise to saboteurs”.
The Haalvsh rights group, which focuses on the Baluch Sunni minority in the southeast, said security forces fired on protesters in Zahedan, the main city of Sistan-Baluchistan province, after Friday prayers, causing an unspecified number of casualties.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a joint statement that since the start of the protests on December 28, security forces “have unlawfully used rifles, shotguns loaded with metal pellets, water cannon, tear gas and beatings to disperse, intimidate and punish largely peaceful protesters”.
This shows “that the use of such weapons to crush protests remains entrenched as state policy”, said Michael Page, HRW’s deputy Middle East and North Africa director.
The son of the shah of Iran ousted by the 1979 Islamic Revolution, US-based Reza Pahlavi, said the rallies showed how “a massive crowd forces the repressive forces to retreat”.
He called for bigger protests Friday “to make the crowd even larger so that the regime’s repressive power becomes even weaker”.
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