Khamenei on the recent protests: We thwarted a big and dangerous conspiracy
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that recent events in the country were a “great and dangerous conspiracy” and had been thwarted by the Iranian people.
Khamenei said in a statement carried on his website that many parties and parties were lurking to implement this plot, and used the issue of gasoline to provoke riots and kill people, he said.
He said that Iran is turning threats from what he called enemies to opportunities, stressing that his country is able to force the United States to retreat, as he put it.
The Iranian leader was commenting on the demonstrations that broke out in mid-this month after the adoption of an increase in gasoline prices, as part of what the Iranian government says is a plan aimed at rationalizing government support and resist fuel smuggling.
Earlier, the Revolutionary Guards said detainees taking part in the protests had confessed to having links to the United States and the Iranian opposition People’s Mujahedeen.
Amnesty International said 143 people were killed during the demonstrations, but the Iranian authorities rejected the figure and spoke of several deaths, including members of the security forces, without providing a casualty toll.
The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran reported that some 4,000 people had been arrested during the recent protests.
Meanwhile, the official IRNA news agency published statements by Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli saying that about 731 banks and 140 government offices were set on fire during the current unrest in Iran.
Rahmani said more than 50 bases used by security forces were attacked and about 70 gas stations were burned. He did not give details of the locations of these attacks and estimated the number of participants in the recent events at a maximum of 200 thousand.
The Iranian interior minister also said that the bombing of the largest gasoline depot in one of the country’s cities was foiled during the recent events, pointing out that the attempt of what he called the bad guys – if successful – to burn half of the city.
Rahmani said in remarks to local television that the authorities had to cut the Internet after the expansion of the scale of the riots, he said.