Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Saturday that negotiating with the United States would not end the protests that have plagued the country for two months, as Washington “will always demand more and more.”
The Tehran authorities have denounced that the demonstrations unleashed on September 16 by the death of Mahsa Amini, detained by the morality police for having violated the country’s strict dress code, are considered “riots” encouraged by the West, in particular for the United States. .
The problem is not that there are four demonstrators in the street, even if each demonstrator, each terrorist, must be punished. […] The battlefield is much bigger. The main enemy is global arrogance,” Khamenei said, referring to the United States and its allies.
The highest figure of the Iranian State spoke this Saturday when he received a delegation of young paramilitaries in Tehran, on the occasion of Basidji week, a volunteer militia linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the ideological army of the Republic, and which has acted as a shock troop against the protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in mid-September.
“Some people are saying in the newspapers or on the Internet that all that can be done to end the unrest, which started a few weeks ago, is to resolve Iran’s issues with the United States and listen to the voice of the nation. [iraniana]???????? How are we going to solve the problem with America? Will the problem be resolved by sitting down, negotiating and getting a commitment from the United States?” Khamenei asked.
No. Negotiation won’t solve anything. Our problem with the United States can only be solved by agreeing to be saved by that country. [Estados Unidos]”, he stated.
According to Khamenei, the United States demands, in order to end hostilities, that Iran abandon its nuclear program, change the Constitution, confine influence within its borders and shut down the defense industry.
“No Iranian can accept such conditions,” he emphasized, also accusing those who say that the voice must be heard, not in relation to the ongoing protests but to those linked to the “big pro-government demonstrations” on the 4th of this month and the crowds. who participated in the funeral of General Qasem Soleimani, assassinated in January 2020.
Qasem Soleimani was an Iranian major general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and, from 1998 to 2020, commander of the Quds Force, a division responsible primarily for extraterritorial military actions and clandestine operations, who was killed in a US airstrike on 3 January 2020. at the Baghdad International Airport in Iraq.
“This huge crowd is the voice of the Iranian nation,” he insisted.
This year’s protests in Iran were initially triggered by the death, on September 16, of a 22-year-old Turkish woman, Mahsa Amini, detained three days earlier by Iranian customs police for misusing the “hijab,” the Islamic headscarf. . .
Gradually, the protests against the use of force in Iran gave way to increasingly numerous demonstrations in support of women and in more cities, and spread to denunciations of the actions of the Revolutionary Guard.
Since the protests began, at least 426 people have been killed and more than 17,400 arrested, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that monitors the ongoing protest movement, according to which at least 55 members of Iran’s security forces they were also killed. .
The challenge to Iran’s theocratic regime also reached one of Iran’s state news agencies, Fars, which came under attack on Friday by a group of hackers who left the portal inaccessible for “several minutes.” .
Fars is one of the main state news agencies reporting on the ongoing protests in Iran and always calling them “riots”, just like the official version of the demonstrations.
This Saturday Fars indicated that access to the portal “was interrupted” after a “complex hacking and cyberattack operation carried out on Friday night.”according to a statement published on the channel he has on the Telegram social network.
Eliminate possible contamination […] it may be a problem for some agency services for a few days. Cyber attacks against the Fars agency occur almost daily from different countries, including the occupied territories. [por Israel]”, indicated the agency when advancing details.
On October 21, a group calling itself “Black Reward” claimed to have obtained documents related to Iran’s nuclear program and demanded that the authorities release all political prisoners detained during the protests.
After a 24-hour ultimatum, documents were posted on social media, purportedly by the group, including a short video showing an Iranian nuclear facility, as well as maps and payrolls.
Last Wednesday, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (IAEA) admitted that one of its subsidiaries had been attacked, but downplayed the importance of the documents in question.
Source: Observadora
