Interior Minister Says Enemies Caused 'Minor' Trouble By Protests

During his Friday prayer sermons, which was the first in the fasting month of Ramadan, Mowlavi Abdolhamid said, "In the past, we have had elections in which we elected representatives and presidents, but they were not real elections, they were appointments.” 

In a free election, people have a choice to vote for whoever they deem fit to represent them, but in Iran the Guardian Council puts forth a number of their cherrypicked insiders, who are not capable of running the country, he said. 

He further described killing of protesters and harsh treatment of people detained during over six months of nationwide rallies against the regime as a "big mistake" and a "grave sin."

"There are protests everywhere in the world, but they (authorities) listen to the people and do not kill them like they did in Iran. Killing protesting people in Iran was a big mistake. They should not have hit and killed people with gunfire. Many people went to prison and the detainees were treated harshly, which was a painful and regretful incident,” he said.

Abdolhamid went on to say that neither religion, nor sect, should be a factor when it comes to elections, noting that the only people who should be in managerial positions are those who can make Iran prosperous, not like the current officials who only care about filling their own pockets.

Although street protests are not as frequent as the past few months, peoples’ hearts are "wounded and in pain," the cleric maintained.

Portraying the previous Iranian year as a grim year with lots of ups and downs that led to the creation of the current protest movement, he said, “The people of Iran felt difficulties regarding many issues, they saw themselves in trouble and failure in life, they were under the most severe economic pressures that threaten their livelihood."

In addition to economic issues, the outspoken Sunni leader said systematic corruption, as well as unpopular domestic and foreign policies were other factors led the people to revolt. 

This Friday again authorities shut down internet access in Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchestan where Abdolhamid delivers his sermons and it is home to the country’s Sunni Baluch minority of up to two million people. Cyberspace watchdog NetBlocks confirmed the major disruption to internet service, saying that the incident follows an ongoing pattern of network blackouts targeting protests during Friday prayers. 

Following his sermons, people of the city held rallies to protest against the Islamic Republic for the 25th week in a row, chanting anti-regime slogans like “We Don’t Want a Child-Killing Regime.” The Sunni Baluch population have taken to the streets in Zahedan every Friday after prayers since September 30 when government forces cracked down on protesters and killed more than 80 protesters, known as Bloody Friday. Earlier in the day, Haalvsh website, a local news outlet that monitors rights violations in Iran's Baluchestan region, said 121 of the protesters who were killed in Zahedan and Khash on Bloody Friday were identified. 

The incident, which happened in one of the tourist hubs of the central city of Yazd on Tuesday, was reported by the Iranian media on Thursday. 

Apparently, hijab enforcers confronted an Iranian woman who reportedly was not covering herself in public, a common sight in society after more than six months of protests ignited by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of ‘hijab police’ in September 2022. The woman, along with two of her companions, started quarreling with the hijab enforcer leading to a scuffle and the arrest of citizens. 

State media claim that the hijab enforcer was beaten by the protesting people, but such allegations have often turned out to be inaccurate by officials to justify its crackdown on protesters. 

Such confrontations have become more frequent in recent months as people are outraged by the regime’s brutal acts to enforce mandatory rules. Citizens are also emboldened by widespread public defiance. The country’s parliament is planning draft new repressive measures to further crackdowns on those defying mandatory hijab, including increased surveillance and cutting access to social services.

As the Holy Month of Ramadan starts, Iran's police warned Wednesday that there will be strict punishments for those caught eating in public during fasting hours. Every year police enforce a national plan to deal with those who break Ramadan rules in public, and transgressors are sometimes sentenced to months of detention and lashes. 

The Belgian capital hosted the European foreign ministers at the Council of Europe on Thursday, a good opportunity for Iranian activists who want European countries to designate the IRGC as a first step, followed by the expulsion of the Islamic Republic’s envoys, towards the fall of the regime. 

Several European politicians, including Danial Ilkhanipour and Alireza Akhondi, were among the speakers of the events that were held during the demonstrations. 

Ilkhanipour, a German-Iranian member of the Hamburg city parliament, told the crowd that in the past few months, Iranians have shown they can achieve what they want if they unite, referring to several rounds of sanctions by EU and a resolution by the European Parliament asking the EU to list the IRGC as a terrorist entity for its role in the repression of popular protests and the supply of drones to Russia.

Akhondi, a Swedish-Iranian member of the Swedish Parliament, said that “The Islamic Republic has killed people in Europe and kidnapped people such as Iranian-German national Jamshid Sharmahd,” who faces a death sentence in Iran on charge of "corruption on earth". Sharmahd, who is also a US resident, is held by Tehran for allegedly heading a pro-monarchist group accused of a deadly 2008 bombing and planning other attacks in the country. Akhondi claimed that a large number of agents of the Islamic Republic are here in Brussels. 

Vahid Beheshti, the British-Iranian activist who is on hunger strike outside the UK Foreign Office for the same cause, also sent a video message to the gathering, telling the European foreign ministers that as Lebanon’s Hezbollah is blacklisted as a terror group, Iran’s Guards should also be designated.

Most of the speakers of the event asked EU members how they can ignore such a large amount of evidence on human rights violations and terrorist acts perpetrated by the IRGC. 

Earlier in the day, the block's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell tweeted that “Ukraine has been attacked again by Russia with Iranian drones, targeting educational facilities and a missile attack on a residential building in Zaporizhzhia. Just when Putin expressed need for peaceful settlement to President Xi, Russian again commits war crimes.”

In January, Borrell said that the European Union cannot list the IRGC as a terrorist entity until an European court has determined that they are, noting "Ministers adopted a new package of sanctions against Iran, targeting those driving the repression.” “The EU strongly condemns the brutal and disproportionate use of force by the Iranian authorities against peaceful protesters," he said but no action was taken to designate the IRGC. 

The IRGC was set up shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution to protect the Shiite clerical ruling establishment and provide a counterweight to the regular armed forces. It has an estimated 125,000-strong military with army, navy and air units. It also commands the Basij religious militia, a volunteer paramilitary force loyal to the clerical establishment which is often used to crack down on anti-government protests.

There have been numerous Iranian terror acts in Europe, where courts have indicted top officials. In addition, IRGC’s record in organizing attacks elsewhere are well-documented. Critics say that Borrell and many of the European diplomats are focused on re-starting nuclear talks with Iran after the previous long round of negotiations in 2021-2022 ended last September without success.

The current round of antiregime protests engulfed the country in September when 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini was on a trip to capital Tehran where she was beaten to death by the ‘morality police’ for “improper hijab.” 

According to the information received by Iran International, Hossein Al-e Ali, a 31-year-old protester died from his injuries sustained from the brutal incident after being hospitalized for a week.

Sources close to his family say he was actively participating in the nationwide protests following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, and lived in hiding for the last two months knowing he was wanted by the security services.

According to Iran International sources, the burial ceremony of Al-e Ali will be held on Thursday, in the Saadi Mausoleum of Shiraz south of Iran.

Al-e Ali was originally from Shiraz and lived in Bandar Abbas for the past few years working as a café owner.

Over 500 protesters including 71 children have been killed by the regime agents since mid-September. Almost 20,000 people have been arrested while the regime has so far executed four people and dozens more sentenced to death.

“My son was a hero. He was martyred for his country … Unity is the key to our victory,” said Zhila Khakpour in an Instagram post taken at the side of her son’s grave at Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra cemetery on Thursday.

Zhila’s 25-year-old son, Ali Seyedi, was shot dead by security forces at a protest rally in Parand, a town 30km to the south of the capital Tehran, on November 4. In the video she posted, she felicitated Iranians for the coming of the new Iranian year and thanked them for supporting the family during their ordeal.

Jila Khakpour at her son’s grave vowing to avenge his killing.

“Everyone says they will avenge you. God willing, we will avenge the bloods of all of you. My darling, I will never let your blood to be trampled on,” she says sitting next to the grave and caressing the image of her son engraved on the stone.

Iranians usually visit the graves of their loved ones on the last Thursday of the year. They wash the graves, adorn it with flowers and candles, and distribute sweets and fruits to those visiting the cemetery but this year the visits have continued into the holiday season with people chanting anti-government slogans and vowing to take revenge in several cases.

Local people and family marking the New Year at Mahsa Amini’s grave.

Hours before the turn of the year, a large crowd gathered at the grave of Mahsa (Jina) Amini in Saqqez in northwestern Iran. The twenty-two-year-old’s death in the custody of the morality police on September 16 sparked a wave of protests across the country that lasted for months.

Videos posted on social media show participants in the ceremony bearing torches and flowers to her grave, singing Kurdish mourning songs and stamping their feet.

People chanting “Down with the Dictator” at the grave of young chef, Mehrshad Shahidi in Arak

In photos widely shared on social media, a little girl Bavan is seen standing at her mother’s grave in Mahabad at Nowruz. The young woman, Fereshteh Ahmadi, was shot in Mahabad on the roof of her house while watching the protests with her little girl. Her grave, like many others in Kurdish areas of Iran, is draped in red tulle and is adorned with red flowers to show that she was martyred.

Some other photos posted on social media show the friends and classmates of the ten-year-old Kian Pourfalak at the side of his grave thousands of kilometers away, in Izeh in southwest Iran, shortly before the turn of the year Monday.

Kian was shot by plainclothesmen in the family car in November during a night of protests in Izeh. His father, Meysam Pirfalk has been confined to a wheelchair after months of hospitalization and several surgeries but his mother, Zeynab Molaei-Rad and his three-year-old brother Radin were unharmed in the attack.

People in Izeh chanting against Khamenei and IRGC at the grave of Kian Pourfalak before the turn of the year.

The government has arrested several citizens it accuses of “terrorism” for the shooting, but Zeynab insists it was the security forces that killed her son. In a fiery speech at her son’s burial, she said she had no doubt about who had shot her family and implicitly accused Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei of responsibility for her young son’s killing.

There were dozens of children and teenagers among the over 500 killed during the protests across Iran, either as protesters or bystanders. The deaths of the children caused protesters to dub the regime as “child-killer”.