‘Fail’: Iranian leader’s chilling words to US

David Wu

Demonstrators took to the streets of Tehran on December 28 over another sharp fall in the value of the Iranian currency, the rial, against the US dollar.

Wild scenes emerged from the capital on Thursday as people clashed with Iranian security forces. Rocks were thrown, cars burned and chants echoed through cities and towns.

One Iranian rights group said at least 62 people, including protesters and security personnel, have been killed as authorities struggled to quell the rallies.

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Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei went on a tweeting frenzy in the early hours of Saturday morning amid the chaos and President Trump’s warning of a strike on Tehran if more people continue to die during the demonstrations.

The dictator first suggested the US commander-in-chief “will fall” like other rulers, including Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the former shah of the Middle East nation.

In another post, he accused his citizens of destroying buildings in the capital “to please the President of the US and make him happy”.

“The rioters have put their hopes in him. If he’s so capable, he should manage his own country,” the Supreme Leader tweeted.

“All should know that the Islamic Republic of Iran that was established with the sacrifice of several hundred thousand honourable people won’t back down in the face of those causing destruction,” he continued in a separate post.

The Supreme Leader then warned Iran “is even more equipped now than before the revolution, and that the US is “wrong in its calculations” on its power.

“Our enemies don’t know Iran. In the past, the US failed due to their flawed planning. Today too, their flawed scheming will cause them to fail,” he wrote to X.

President Trump issued a renewed threat to Tehran on Friday following the dictator’s comments, but insisted he would not send troops into the nation, yet.

“Iran is in big trouble. It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago,” he told reporters at the White House.

“I’ve made the statement very strongly that if they start killing people like they have in the past, we will get involved … That doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts. We don’t want that to happen.”

He said US officials are monitoring the situation closely.

“This is something pretty incredible that’s happening in Iran … They’ve done a bad job. They’ve treated their people very badly, and now they’re being paid back,” he added.

Iranians took to the streets in new protests Friday to press the biggest movement against the Islamic republic in over three years, as authorities sustained an internet blackout as part of a crackdown that has left dozens dead.

Protests have taken place across Iran for 13 days in a movement sparked by anger over the rising cost of living that is now marked by calls for the end of the clerical system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution which ousted the pro-Western shah.

In Tehran’s Sadatabad district people banged pots and chanted anti-government slogans including “death to Khamenei”, in reference to the Supreme Leader, as cars hooted in support, a video verified by AFP showed.

Videos published by Persian language television channels based outside Iran showed large numbers taking part in new protests in the eastern city of Mashhad, Tabriz in the north and the holy city of Qom.

Anti-Iranian regime protests have also erupted in other parts of the world including London, Berlin and Brussels.

These protests followed giant demonstrations on Thursday that were the biggest in Iran since the 2022-2023 protest movement sparked by the custody death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the dress rules for women.

The new rallies came as internet monitor Netblocks said authorities had now imposed a “nationwide internet shutdown” for the last 24 hours that was violating the rights of Iranians and “masking regime violence”.

In a separate statement, Amnesty International said the “blanket internet shutdown” aims to “hide the true extent of the grave human rights violations and crimes under international law they are carrying out to crush” the protests.

Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights, raising a previous toll of 45 issued the day earlier, said at least 51 protesters, including nine children under the age of 18, have been killed by security forces and hundreds more injured.

‘Stained with blood’

Khamenei struck a defiant tone in his first comments on the protests since January 3, calling the demonstrators “vandals” and “saboteurs”, in a speech broadcast on state TV.

Khamenei said President Trump’s hands “are stained with the blood of more than a thousand Iranians”, in apparent reference to Israel’s June war against the Islamic republic which the US supported and joined with strikes of its own.

He predicted the “arrogant” US leader would be “overthrown” like the imperial dynasty that ruled Iran up to the 1979 revolution.

President Trump earlier on Thursday told Fox News that “enthusiasm to overturn that regime is incredible” and warned the death of more protesters meant strikes on Tehran.

The US leader also went as far as to suggest Khamenei may be looking to leave Iran.

“He’s looking to go someplace,” he said.

‘Red line’

The son of the shah of Iran ousted by the 1979 Islamic Revolution, US-based Reza Pahlavi, urged Trump to intervene to help the protesters, adding “the people will be on the streets again in an hour”.

But judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei warned that punishment of “rioters” would be “decisive, the maximum and without many legal leniency”.

The intelligence branch of the Revolutionary Guards, the security force entrusted with ensuring the preservation of the Islamic republic, said the “continuation of this situation is unacceptable” and protecting the revolution was its “red line”.

Iranian Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi, who lives in exile, warned security forces could be preparing to commit a “massacre under the cover of a sweeping communications blackout”.

The leaders of France, the United Kingdom and Germany on Friday issued a joint statement condemning what they described as the “killing of protesters” in Iran, urging the authorities to “exercise restraint”.

Meanwhile, Iranian state television on Friday broadcast images of thousands of people attending counter-protests and brandishing slogans in favour of the authorities in some Iranian cities.

The Haalvsh rights group, which focuses on the Baluch Sunni minority in the southeast, said security forces fired on protesters in Zahedan, the main city of Sistan-Baluchistan province, after Friday prayers, causing an unspecified number of casualties.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said in a joint statement that since the start of the protests on December 28, security forces “have unlawfully used rifles, shotguns loaded with metal pellets, water cannon, tear gas and beatings to disperse, intimidate and punish largely peaceful protesters”.

– with AFP