Hezbollah Chief Charges US With ‘Satanic’ Meddling, Use of Troll Armies Against Iran Amid Protests
19:14 GMT 01.10.2022 (Updated: 19:23 GMT 01.10.2022)
© Photo : YouTube / Zabby Live News
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Iran has faced two weeks of civil unrest following the death of a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini in religious police custody under suspicious circumstances. Tehran released CCTV footage debunking protesters’ claims that the woman was beaten into a coma, and accused the US and others of trying to foment a color revolution.
Hezbollah secretary general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has ripped Washington for engaging in a “satanic” campaign to try to bring down the Iranian government and divide the Islamic world.
“The constant incitement against Iran and the painting of its people as an ‘enemy’ is a satanic deed aimed at ripping the nation apart,” Nasrallah said in a televised address Saturday.
“The United States exploits any incident in Iran in order to provoke the nation against the Islamic establishment, the latest of which is the protests that have broken out following Ms. Amini’s tragic death,” Nasrallah said. “US-backed vandals took advantage of the unclear circumstances surrounding her death to challenge the Islamic Republic after America’s campaign of so-called ‘maximum pressure’ failed dismally,” he added.
Saying that the Islamic Republic was “stronger and braver” than ever, Nasrallah suggested that successive US administrations have recognized their inability to defeat Iran militarily, and have instead “bet on disputes at home” to try to divide and destabilize the country.
“Western and Persian Gulf media outlets are working to incite people against [the Iranian government]. US administrations have established troll armies across social media platforms to undermine Iran, but all to no avail,” he said.
Cities across Iran have been rocked by more than two weeks of protests following Amini’s death. The young woman died in a hospital in Tehran on September 16, three days after being detained by Iran’s Guidance Patrol, better known as the ‘morality police’, for breaking hijab rules. Demonstrations began a day after her death, with demonstrators and provocateurs on social media accusing police of causing her death by severely beating her.
25 September 2022, 18:20 GMT
Iranian authorities tried to defuse the situation by releasing security cam footage appearing to show that Amini was not subjected to any form of physical abuse while in Guidance Patrol custody. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi ordered a special investigation into the case and expressed condolences to Amini’s family.
However, the violence has not subsided, and scores of people, both protesters and police, have been wounded or killed in violent street clashes in the past two weeks.
US media have made no secret of America’s role in fomenting the violence. Last week, Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad boasted in an interview with the New Yorker magazine that she was “leading this movement,” and expressed confidence that “the Iranian regime will be brought down by women.” Alinejad works for Voice of America Persia and Radio Farda, the US government-funded branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The journalist has spent years calling on Washington to slap more sanctions against her birth country, and pro-Iranian media have accused her of ties to the CIA.
The protests in Iran began just one day after Iran was formally admitted into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a nine-member Eurasian economic and security bloc of nations which also includes China, Russia and India, among others.
25 September 2022, 20:49 GMT
Last week, the information portal of the BRICS group of nations charged the West with seeking to foment a color revolution in the Islamic Republic.
On Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani accused Western powers and media of openly supporting the violent unrest.
“In the recent riots, political leaders of America and, sometimes, Europe, as well as their media and hostile Persian-language outlets backed by the West abused a sad event that is being investigated, and went the extra mile in support of rioters and disruptors of national security under the pretext of support for human rights,” Kanani wrote in an Instagram post.
