Iran's Supreme Leader green lights further crackdown in meeting with militia

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iran's Supreme Leader on Saturday praised the militia responsible for killing hundreds of protesters during a meeting in Tehran, rejecting the idea that the demonstrators have legitimate demands.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed the US of being behind the escalation of protests, saying that negotiations with the country bear no fruit and that the revival of the nuclear deal means surrendering to Washington.

The forces under Khamenei's command including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its militia Basij have killed at least 440 protesters and bystanders including, at least 61 children, in just three months of anti-government protest sparked by the killing of Kurdish woman Zhina (Mahsa) Amini in mid-September by Tehran's morality police.

"There are four rioters in the street, are you only dealing with this?" Khamenei asked hundreds of members of the Basij in attendance, in a disparaging tone towards the protesters. He said that the Basijis were in the midst of a grand battle and they should not lose sight of it because of a few "rioters' ' in the streets of Iran.

"You defended the Haram [holy shrines in Syria] from the US manufactured Daesh," Khamenei said referring to thousands of IRGC guards and Basijis who have assisted the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for Islamic State (ISIS).

"You assisted the warriors of Lebanon, you helped the Palestinians, we will help them again."

"The rioters are the extension of those who were defeated in the grand plan," Khamenei, the ultimate decision maker in the country, said. He added that the "rioters" should be punished.

The forces under Khamenei's command have used live ammunition and at times heavy machine guns against protesters, killing hundreds and injuring thousands more. Many have been detained and a number of detainees have died under torture.

The Sunni religious establishment in Iran has come out to support the legitimate demands of the protesters and have condemned the security forces for killing protesters. The spiritual leader of the Sunnis in Iran, Mawlana Abdul Hamid, said on Friday that the regime has reached a dead-end and ruled out the notion propagated by the regime that protesters are at the service of the US or Israel.

"The biggest concern we have is that many officials were not prepared to hear our voices .. but they did not listen to anyone and the result is this dissatisfaction that exists in the country today," Hamid told his congregation at the Maki mosque in Zahedan on Friday. "The voice of the people shows that the policies of the past 43 years have reached a dead-end and they cannot rule this country with these policies, the solution is not imprisonment and killing of protesters."
 
The crackdown in the Kurdish areas has been especially severe, where at least 104 people have been gunned down as of Friday, including at least 11 children according to Paris-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN). 

Khamenei, who typically tends to define the ultimate policy of the state in times of crisis through speeches, appears to have ruled out any further negotiations on the revival of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), stating that the enemies want to erase Iran' influence in the region and then to dismantle the Islamic Republic from within.

Khamenei said that the revival of Iran nuclear deal which he referred to as "JCPOA2" was aimed at forcing Iran to exit the region and end its influence in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and other countries.

"Negotiation does not resolve our problem with the US. True, one thing resolves our problem and that is to budge to America, not once but many times," Khamenei said.

Since the beginning of the protests there have been voices from within the establishment to listen to the demands of the people, including from Islamic Republic newspaper which used to be managed by Khamenei in the early 1980s. But, Khamenei ruled out the possibility of legitimate demands existing, and instead said that the voices of the people of Iran were heard during the funeral of General Qasem Soleimani who was killed in January 2020 is a US strike at Baghdad airport.

Khamenei urged the Basijis to be vigilant during the Qatar 2022 World Cup, claiming the enemies of the state are busy plotting, and praised the national team for defeating Wales on Friday. "Be aware of the infiltration of the enemy in the Basij," Khamenei told Basijis.