Khamenei says will not yield as Iran protests simmer, death toll rises
TEHRAN
Iran's supreme leader insisted on Jan. 3 that “rioters must be put in their place” after a week of protests that have shaken the Islamic Republic, likely giving security forces a green light to aggressively put down the demonstrations.
The first comments by 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei come as violence surrounding the demonstrations sparked by Iran's ailing economy has killed at least 15 people, according to human rights activists. The protests show no sign of stopping and follow U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran on Jan. 2 that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States “will come to their rescue.”
The protests, have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations. However, the protests have yet to be as widespread and intense as those surrounding the death of Amini, who was detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.
State television aired remarks by Khamenei to an audience in Tehran that sought to separate the concerns of protesting Iranians upset about the rial's collapse from “rioters.”
“We talk to protesters, the officials must talk to them,” Khamenei said. “But there is no benefit to talking to rioters. Rioters must be put in their place.”
He also reiterated a claim constantly made by officials in Iran that foreign powers like Israel or the United States were pushing the protests, without offering any evidence. He also blamed “the enemy” for Iran's collapsing rial.
Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard ranks include the all-volunteer Basij force, whose motorcycling-riding members have violently put down protests like the 2009 Green Movement and the 2022 demonstrations. The Guard answers only to Khamenei.
Two deaths overnight into Jan. 3 involved a new level of violence. In Qom, home to the country's major Shiite seminaries, a grenade exploded, killing a man there, the state-owned IRAN newspaper reported. It quoted security officials alleging the man was carrying the grenade to attack people in the city, some 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of the capital, Tehran.
Online videos from Qom purportedly showed fires in the street overnight.
The second death happened in the town of Harsin, some 370 kilometers (230 miles) southwest of Tehran. There, the newspaper said, a member of the Basij, the all-volunteer arm of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, died in a gun and knife attack in the town in Kermanshah province.
Demonstrations have reached over 170 locations in 25 of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported early yesterday. The death toll had reached at least 15 killed, it added, with over 580 arrests. The group, which relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting, has been accurate in past unrest.
The state-run IRNA news agency separately reported on what it described as violence in Malekshahi County in Iran's Ilam province, some 515 kilometers (320 miles) southwest of Tehran. It offered no specific details.
The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights put the death toll at four in the violence there, accusing Iranian security forces of opening fire on demonstrators.
The semiofficial Fars news agency, believed to be close to the Revolutionary Guard, alleged without offering evidence that demonstrators carried firearms and grenades.