Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (foreground right) reviews a group of armed forces cadets during their graduation ceremony accompanied by commanders of the armed forces, at the police academy in Tehran, Iran, Monday, October 3, 2022
IRANIAN communists slammed claims by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday that the protest wave sweeping the country was orchestrated by the United States and Israel.
Visiting a police academy Mr Khamenei said he was “heartbroken” by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini three weeks ago, which prompted the explosion of street protests that has engulfed Iran since, but claimed that “these riots ... were designed by America and the zionist regime.”
He added that female protesters who had torn off their hijabs — Ms Amini was arrested for failure to comply with Iran’s sexist dress code — were undertaking “actions that are not normal, that are unnatural” and said young people who “come to the streets in excitement after watching something on the internet” should be “disciplined,” while protest organisers should be subject to “harsh prosecution and punishment.”
MOHAMMAD OMIDVAR, a senior figure in the Tudeh Party of Iran, tells the Morning Star that mass protests are rooted in poverty, corruption and neoliberal rule and warns against monarchist revival and US-engineered regime change
The Committee for the Defence of Iranian People’s Rights (Codir) welcomes demonstrations across Iran, which have put pressure upon the theocratic dictatorship, but warns against intervention by the United States to force Iran in a particular direction
In the second of two articles, STEVE BISHOP looks at how the 1979 revolution’s aims are obfuscated to create a picture where the monarchists are the opposition to the theocracy, not the burgeoning workers’ and women’s movement on the streets of Iran
