Iran’s supreme leader signaled a hard line Friday against protesters rocking the Islamic Republic, accusing them of acting on behalf of President Donald Trump as authorities struggling to contain the unrest shut the country off from the world.
In his first major address to the nation since widespread demonstrations erupted almost two weeks ago, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said protesters were “ruining their own streets to make the president of another country happy,” according to news agencies.
After Trump’s repeated threats to intervene, Khamenei said the president should focus on problems in his own country.
The brief speech was aired on state television after the most intense night yet in the wave of unrest, which began in protest at the country's ailing economy but has grown into a broader challenge to the ruling clerical regime.
Khamenei signaled authorities would intensify their crackdown on demonstrations, with the internet shut down nationwide and international calls not reaching the country. Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei vowed separately that punishment for protesters “will be decisive, maximum and without any legal leniency,” according to The Associated Press.
Huge crowds took to the streets of the capital Tehran and other cities late Thursday into Friday, according to videos posted online, in one of the largest shows of force against the country’s religious establishment in several years. Dozens have already been killed in a violent crackdown by security forces.
The protests started in the heart of the capital over the collapse of Iran's currency and soaring prices. They have since broadened with demonstrators chanting slogans against Khamenei, the highest authority in the country, in Tehran and other cities.
Some have shouted their support for the late former shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, something that could bring a death sentence in the past. Reza Pahlavi, the shah's exiled son, has urged his supporters to take to the streets.
Pahlavi issued calls, rebroadcast by Farsi-language satellite news channels and websites abroad, for Iranians to return to the streets Friday night.
In a separate post on social media, he called for Trump’s help. “You have proven and I know you are a man of peace and a man of your word. Please be prepared to intervene to help the people of Iran,” he wrote.
Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Friday in a statement reported by Iran's hard-line Student News Network that "protecting the achievements of the Islamic Revolution" is a "red line," while acknowledging "the livelihood and professional concerns of the people" and "any potential negligence."
NetBlocks, an internet monitoring group, said on X that the internet had been completely cut off across the country by early evening Thursday local time, a tactic that officials have used during past protests to prevent unrest from spreading and videos of violence leaking out of the country, analysts say.
Iran “is now in the midst of a nationwide internet blackout,” the group said.
Khamenei's official X account continued to post messages on Friday in English and Farsi, even as the rest of Iran was cut off.
Authorities have struggled to contain the protests after 12 days, and top officials have given conflicting messages about how to deal with the unrest.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has said protesters’ concerns should be addressed, while hard-liners have issued stern warnings and claimed foreign agents were stoking the unrest.
Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group, said in a telephone interview: “We know the president doesn’t really control the situation at times like this."
“The security and intelligence forces are going to do what they always do, and they are starting to do it more systematically,” Ghaemi said.
Security forces have not held back, according to rights groups. Amnesty International said in a news release Thursday that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the police “have unlawfully used rifles, shotguns loaded with metal pellets, water cannon, tear gas and beatings to disperse, intimidate and punish largely peaceful protesters.”
Officials have also tried to cover up the killings, Amnesty said, by forcing the families of some victims to give interviews to state media blaming accidents or other protesters. Authorities have threatened secret burials if family members do not comply, the group said.
The group added that there have been “mass arbitrary arrests.”
The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, a Norwegian-registered Kurdish watchdog group that monitors rights violations across Iran, reported Thursday that security forces have killed 42 people during the protests, including six children.
The violent crackdown may come at a price.
Trump, who said he would intervene in Iran last week, repeated the threat Thursday in an interview on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”
“I have let them know that if they start killing people, which they tend to do during their riots — they have lots of riots — if they do it, we’re going to hit them very hard,” Trump said.
He also added a message for the protesters. “You should feel strongly about freedom. There’s nothing like freedom. You’re brave people. It’s a shame what’s happened to your country. Your country was a great country,” Trump said.
A White House official told NBC News that “The president has demonstrated this with Operation Midnight Hammer and Operation Absolute Resolve that he means what he says,” referring to U.S. attacks on Iranian nuclear sites and Venezuela.
Trump’s warning presents an additional challenge for Iranian authorities who have not been able to contain the unrest in the streets and were alarmed by the surprise capture last weekend of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, a close ally.
“Trump’s threat put the system in a catch-22: If the protests grow, it might resort to increasing levels of violence to subdue them. But if they resort to greater violence, they run the risk of U.S. involvement,” Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, said in a text message response to questions.
Videos that circulated online Thursday showed large gatherings of protesters in the major cities of Tehran, Mashhad — long considered a conservative bastion of government support — and Isfahan, as well as smaller ones such as Kermanshah in western Iran, where demonstrators chanted “Death to dictator.”
A video geolocated by NBC News that circulated Thursday shows a white sedan ramming into a group of security forces walking on a street in Mashhad.
A video posted by BBC Persian appears to show security forces firing at protesters in the western Iranian city of Dezful, while another video geolocated by NBC News shows a large fire at the offices of the state broadcaster, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, in Isfahan.
So far, neither side is backing down.
“There are still off-ramps for reconciliation for the system to avert a full-on bloody revolution,” Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said in a telephone interview. “And we may start seeing indications and signs of that as the protests go into their third, fourth weeks. But we’re not there yet.”
