IRAN: Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, hailed the Islamic Republic of Iran as a defender of freedoms and rights while upholding the current political order amid a crackdown on anti-government demonstrations.
An ongoing protest that has swept the country since mid-September has resulted in 200 deaths, the Iranian state authority stated in its first official statement.
“200 persons lost their lives in the recent riots,” said the Interior Ministry’s Security Council.
The protests, now in their third month, began when Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, died in the custody of the nation’s “morality police” in Tehran for allegedly breaking a strict dress code.
Furious Iranians from all social strata have joined the protests, turning it into one of the most audacious challenges to the clerical establishment since the 1979 revolution.
The authorities of Iran have blamed the unrest on foreign adversaries, including the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
The security agency’s statement on Saturday highlighted the significance of foreign involvement in the protests, claiming that the nation has been faced with a hybrid war fought by rival governments and “terrorist” media organizations.
The statement comes days after Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said that more than 300 individuals had been martyred and slain during the turmoil.
On Tuesday, Javaid Rehman, a U.N.-appointed independent expert on Iran, claimed that more than 300 people, including more than 40 children, had died in the protests.
As per the rights organization HRANA, 469 protestors, including 64 kids, had died as of Friday.
61 members of the government’s security forces were also reported dead. It is estimated that up to 18,210 demonstrators have been detained.
Molavi Abdolhamid, a well-known Baluch Sunni Muslim imam, has called for a stop to the arresting and killing protestors and a referendum on altering Iran’s political structure.
He stated in late November that “the people’s protest has proven that the policies of the last 43 years have reached a dead end.”
Meanwhile, in a speech to lawmakers, Raisi quoted an unnamed African lawyer he claimed to have met years ago, saying that because of how his country’s constitution marries ideas with democracy, Iran has the most progressive constitution in the entire world.
He added that the constitution guaranteed fundamental rights and legitimate liberties, as well as the presence of the Islamic system.
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