Iran’s Khamenei tells officials to ‘act on their duties’ amid ongoing protests

Al-Monitor – Over a dozen Iranian cities saw yet another tense day as government forces attacked protesters in the streets, at university campuses and in residential districts, according to multiple opposition sources and a string of videos on social media.  

Scenes of violent arrests by security forces and plainclothes Basij militia were reported from many locations across the capital, Tehran, including the southern district of Naziabad. The campus of Iran’s largest academic center, Tehran University, was the site of angry scuffles between protesting students and Basij forces, while riot police were seen firing teargas inside a commercial center a few kilometers away. The city’s government-imposed internet disruptions were also at their worst compared to the past three weeks, witnesses confirmed to Al-Monitor. There were also reports that even landline communication had been cut off in many flashpoint neighborhoods.  

The tense developments were preceded by an early morning speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who once again blamed the unrest on foreign “enemies” and their “agents” at home. Khamenei dismissed criticism about security measures and justified them on “necessity,” telling the intelligence apparatus and judges to “act on their duties,” while downplaying the protests as a “trivial issue.”   

Iranian government forces, according to an updated tally by the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights, have killed 201 protesters, including 23 minors, since the unrest broke out on Sept. 16 following the death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurdish woman, in the custody of the morality police. Iran denies killing the protesters, and in the latest, the country’s police chief said some individuals had been arrested after wearing fatigues and “impersonating” riot police “to fuel unrest.”  

‘We’ll destroy what we’ve built’ 

A strike by contract workers in several petrochemical and refinery centers in the energy-rich south Asaluyeh entered the third day on Wednesday, despite many arrests at the site of their protests. A video also went viral on Tuesday from what appeared to be a drilling tower, where a group of workers issued threats of sabotage to the ruling establishment. “We will destroy what we have built here,” they were heard saying, setting a three-day deadline for government forces to put an end to the clampdown.   

Such strikes also hit business centers in many Kurdish cities, including Kermanshah, Boukan, Saghez and Sarpol-e-Zahab, among others. The shutdown came in solidarity with the Kurdish city of Sanandaj, which remains under a massive security and military lockdown, according to activist groups. 

Meanwhile, as protests by hijab-defying schoolgirls gathered steam, more reports came out from different locations on police action against them. The foreign-based Hengaw rights advocacy organization cited eyewitnesses as saying that forces with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had “opened fire” on a crowd of those protesting students outside a school in the city of Boukan.   

Iran’s hard-line Education Minister Yousef Nouri has confirmed that a number of schoolgirls have been arrested recently and are being held at “psychiatric centers.” Nouri did not specify how many of those students were in detention but noted that the move was about “correcting” them so that “they won’t turn into anti-social individuals.”