Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused anti-government protesters of acting on behalf of President Donald Trump, calling them “vandals” who are destroying Iranian cities in hopes of capturing Trump’s attention.
Protesters across Iran are “ruining their own streets … in order to please the president of the United States,” Khamenei said in a Friday address broadcast by Iranian state television from his compound in Tehran.
“Because he said that he would come to their aid, he should pay attention to the state of his own country instead,” Khamenei said.
The address was Khamenei’s first acknowledgement of the mass demonstrations that began in Tehran on Dec. 28 over the collapse of the country’s currency, the rial, but have since intensified into protests against the Iranian regime.
The comments came as the Iranian authoritarian regime plunged the country into a communications blackout on Thursday night, severing access to the internet and international phone calls in an attempt to quell a protest called by the country’s exiled crown prince, Reza Pahlavi.
Thursday’s protest marked a massive escalation in the demonstrations, which have become one of the largest threats to Iran’s theocracy in recent years.
Last week, Trump threatened Iran with U.S. intervention if the regime “violently kills peaceful protesters,” saying in a Truth Social post that “the United States of America will come to their rescue.”
Trump’s warning drew swift condemnation from Iranian leaders.
A day later, on Jan. 3, U.S. special forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has long supported Tehran. Maduro and his wife have pleaded not guilty to drug-related charges and are being held in a Brooklyn jail.
“You can see how they’ve besieged a country in Latin America & taken some actions there,” Khamenei wrote in a post on his official X account Friday, despite the internet blackout. “They aren’t even ashamed and explicitly state that this was for oil. For oil! They say they’ve done this for oil!”
In a news conference aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said that Iran would “get hit very hard by the United States” if they “start killing people like they have in the past.” The White House had not issued an official response to Khamenei’s address as of Friday, but Trump on Thursday reposted a video of protests in Iran’s second-largest city, Mashhad, to his Truth Social account. The demonstrations have spread to all 31 of Iran’s provinces, according to a report from the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which relies on reporting from an activist network inside Iran. Dozens have been reported killed and almost 2,300 arrested or detained, according to HRANA. Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, Iran’s judiciary chief, vowed that punishment for protesters would be “decisive, maximum and without any legal leniency,” signaling a violent crackdown on the protests. Videos verified by Reuters showed hundreds of people marching in Tehran. In one video, a woman can be heard shouting, “Death to Khamenei!” Other chants in support of Iran’s monarchy, which fell during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, could be heard in the videos, according to Reuters.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
Khamenei said Trump’s hands are “stained with the blood of Iranians” in his address Friday, as a crowd of supporters could be heard chanting, “Death to America!”
