Iran’s Khamenei, Supporters Make Strange Claims Amid Protests
Although Ali Khamenei has for the first time acknowledged that "riots" are sweeping across Iran, he and many of his officials continue to make absurd remarks.
Although Ali Khamenei has for the first time acknowledged that "riots" are sweeping across Iran, he and many of his officials continue to make absurd remarks.
In a speech on Saturday, Khamenei accused the enemies of trying to slow down Iran's progress but stopped short of explaining what progress he was referring to.
Under his authoritarian rule Iran’s economy has been ruined in the past decade, with tens of millions falling into poverty. Except for some military hardware, the Islamic Republic has little to show as progress, with protesters across the country demanding regime change.
Individuals such as former parliament speaker Gholamali Haddad-Adel, a close relative of Khamenei, followed suit blaming foreign countries for the protests that have been going on since mid-September after a young woman was murdered in custody of ‘morality police’ in Tehran.
Haddad-Adel claimed during a meeting with hardliner politicians in Tehran on Saturday, [Nov. 18,] that he had evidence to prove "47 countries have an Iran desk in their government and spend budget" to monitor the Islamic Republic. Haddad Adel, however, did not mention that the Iranian government has several centers to monitor events in other countries. Those include an American Studies Center at the University of Tehran, and several Strategic Studies Centers at the Iranian Foreign Ministry and other offices that work on Iran's neighbors and countries as far asway as in South America.
Iran's neighbors and others have every reason to watch a country that threatens them. The Islamic Republic also threatens navigation and trade in the strategic Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman and only two weeks ago, regional countries and the United States were alerted about possible Iranian military action against Saudi Arabia and warned Tehran against it.
Add to that the West's long-standing concern about Tehran's support for terror groups in the region and beyond. During the past two weeks, Iran has threatened to destabilize Europe, and threatened journalists in the United Kingdom. The authorities and security and anti-terrorism experts in London have taken Tehran's threats seriously.
Haddad-Adel also claimed that the United States is destabilizing Iran because it is the only country in the world that does not surrender to domination. But Iran has signed long-term agreements with China that some former Iranian officials including former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have described as “colonial.”
Nonetheless, there are other Iranian politicians whose remarks about foreign intervention in Iran are even more outlandish. According to Jamaran News, a proreform website in Tehran, Javad Nikbin, an Iranian lawmaker from Kashmar, a small town in Khorasan Province, claimed on November 17 that it was the United States that set fire to Tehran's Evin Prison in mid-October.
Nikbin quoted Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian as having told him about the October 16 Fire at Evin Prison in Tehran: "The night when Evin Prison was set on fire, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called me as soon as I arrived at my home and was taking off my jacket. The secretary said that the US has four prisoners in Evin who were supposed to be swapped with Iran's prisoners in the United States and he was worried that something could happen to them. I told him nothing had happened." A comment under the Jamaran News tweet said jokingly: "Blinken could have waited for our foreign minister to take off his jacket. It was certainly difficult for him answering the phone with his hand still in the sleeve."
Nikbin further claimed that "The United States used its men in Tehran to set fire to the prison," and claimed that "The US secretary of state knew about the fire 40 minutes before we found out about it." Nonetheless, the most interesting part of the report is that the Iranian foreign ministry denied any such conversation between the foreign minister and Nikbin, and of course a phone conversation between the Iranian and the US chief diplomats.
But even that is not the end of the story. On November 19, some Iranian newspapers published Nikbin's rather funny account of the conversation as news. The Islamic Republic needs controversial stories to distract attentions from the ongoing violent crackdown on protesters.
