After nearly a week of protests and clashes across Iran, the president of the United States has intervened with a direct threat, and the ayatollahs’ regime has not remained silent.
President Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that “if Iran fires on peaceful protesters and kills them, as it is accustomed to doing, the United States will come to their aid. We are alert and ready for action.”
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Trump issues threat after unrest in Iran
(Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP, Getty Images)
Responding to the dramatic warning, Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote Friday that “the American people should know that Trump has begun this adventure. They should worry about their soldiers. Trump must understand that American intervention in internal affairs means sowing chaos throughout the region and harming American interests.”
Larijani, who serves as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, added in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that “with the statements issued by Trump and Israeli officials, what is happening behind the scenes has become clear. We distinguish between the legitimate demands of protesters and subversive elements.”
Clashes in Azna on Thursday
(Video: Iran international)
Iranian and foreign media reported Thursday that at least five people were killed during clashes that erupted amid demonstrations against the regime. The deaths mark an escalation after one fatality was reported the previous day, a Basij member, and no deaths were reported earlier in the protest wave.
The demonstrations began Sunday as a spontaneous protest by merchants in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar and gained momentum as students at at least 10 universities in the capital and other cities joined in. The protests were fueled by rampant inflation and a sharp currency devaluation, which has made it increasingly difficult for citizens, already suffering from more than 20 years of Western sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program, to purchase food and basic goods.
In 2015, following the signing of the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, the Iranian rial stood at about 32,000 to the dollar. Today, one dollar is worth nearly 1.4 million rials.
The Iranian news agency Fars reported Thursday night that three people were killed in clashes between protesters and security forces in the town of Azna in Lorestan province in western Iran. According to the report, “rioters” exploited a demonstration to attack a local police station. Three people were killed and 17 others wounded. The report did not specify the identities of the dead or which side they belonged to.
Protest against the regime in Lordegan, Iran
The report was published hours after Fars reported another deadly incident in Lordegan district in the country’s southwest, where two people were killed during clashes. According to the agency, more than 150 people took part in the protest, and at one point participants began throwing stones at buildings, including the governor’s office.
Fars claimed that when police and security forces arrived, they were also pelted with stones and responded with tear gas, while protesters were seen carrying weapons, burning tires and attempting to set various sites on fire. Opposition groups said the two people killed in Lordegan were protesters.
Iran International, a Persian-language opposition channel broadcasting from London, published videos Thursday that it said showed clashes in Nahavand in western Iran, where security forces allegedly opened fire on protesters. The channel also reported a rare demonstration in the Shiite holy city of Qom.
According to the opposition outlet, protesters in Qom chanted, among other slogans, “Long live the shah,” referring to Iran’s monarch who was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The current wave of protests is the largest to hit Iran in three years, but for now it does not approach the scale of the demonstrations that shook the country during the 2022 hijab protests. Those protests saw mass calls for the overthrow of the regime following the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish Iranian woman who was detained by Tehran’s morality police for allegedly failing to properly wear her head covering and later died in custody.
In Israel, officials believe it is still difficult to determine where the protests in Iran are headed. On Thursday, however, Minister Gila Gamliel declared that “the Iranian regime is in its final moments. It is weakening every day.” An Israeli official responded by saying Gamliel was “speaking on her own and should not be making such statements.”