Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is looking to flee the country according to US President Donald Trump, as nationwide protests broke out demanding regime change.
At least 40 protesters and several police officers have been killed in the clashes according to rights groups and local media, with 2,200 arrests and counting.
Iranians have demonstrated in more than 100 cities and towns across the country, according to human rights groups.
Protesters swarmed the streets in their thousands shouting anti regime slogans, while other footage showed cars and piles of motorbikes set on fire.
Trump said the head of the Islamic Republic is “looking to go someplace” to escape, adding that Iran was on the “verge of collapse”.
And he warned that the US would hit the country hard if protesters were killed, saying he had “put Iran on notice”.
“There’s so many people protesting,” he said in an interview with Sean Hannity for Fox News. Nobody’s ever seen anything like what’s happening right now, but I have put Iran on notice that if they start shooting at them — these people are totally unarmed people, and they love their country.
“They want something to happen. Look at their country. They’ve gone back 150 years. But I’ve warned them that if they do anything bad to these people, we’re going to hit them very hard. I’ve said it very loud and very clear, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Iran and its population are cut off from the outside world as nationwide blackouts were imposed on Thursday and Friday. Footage that did leak out of the country showed buildings and shops in flames and vehicles overturned. The protests were expected to continue despite the media crackdown.
Khamenei blamed Trump for the demonstrations, accusing protesters of being “saboteurs” and “terrorist agents” working for the US and Israel in his first public address since the unrest on Friday.
He said demonstrators were “ruining their own streets to make the president of another country happy” and that “the Islamic Republic will not tolerate mercenaries working for foreign powers”.
The supreme leader has been serving as head of state since 1989 and is only the second in the position since the 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew the monarchy of Shah Reza Pahlavi and ushered in the theocratic state structure.
Khamenei insisted that the country would not back down, saying: “Everyone should know that the Islamic Republic came to power with the blood of hundreds of thousands of honourable people, and it will not back down in the face of saboteurs.”
Protests began a fortnight ago when Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late shah, told Iranians on social media: “The eyes of the world are upon you. Take to the streets.”
But the groundwork for the unrest was already being laid in the months ahead because of a widening economic crisis that has seen inflation rates hit 40 per cent.
The UN re-imposed sanctions in September plunging the country into economic hardship and sending the country’s rial currency into freefall – it is now exchanging at 1.4m to $1.
Protests began springing up in December as merchants in Tehran expressed frustration at rising costs. The country has also been reeling from a 12-day conflict in June, initiated by Israel, which saw US forces bomb Iranian nuclear facilities.
United Nations rights chief Volker Turk said he was “deeply disturbed by reports of violence” on the streets of Iran and by the communications shutdowns that had ensued.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araqchi shrugged off concerns of foreign military intervention, calling the risk of such involvement “very low”. But there is some concern that the US could be involved after several warnings from Trump and the unprecedented capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last weekend.
Iran has undergone several waves of protests including student demonstrations in 1999, backlash to elections in 2009, unrest over the economy in 2019 and the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022 following the death of 22-year-old Maha Amini, who was killed in the custody of Iran’s morality police.
Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, warned on Friday that violent crackdowns on Iran’s protesters are “unacceptable”.
“The Iranian people are fighting for their future. By ignoring their rightful demands, the regime shows its true colours,” Kaja Kallas wrote in a post on X/Twitter.
“Images from Tehran reveal a disproportionate and heavy-handed response by the security forces. Any violence against peaceful demonstrators is unacceptable. Shutting down the internet while violently suppressing protests exposes a regime afraid of its own people.”
But Iran’s judiciary has promised that punishment for rioters will be “decisive, maximal, and without legal leniency”.
