© Carlos Barria / Reuters
Iranian officials call Trump's support of protesters in the country "deceitful" and "opportunist."The Iranian government denounced President Donald Trump on Saturday after he escalated his support for the anti-government protesters who have been holding demonstrations in the country for three days.
Trump
tweeted Friday his praise of the "peaceful protests" in Iran, calling protesters
"Iranian citizens fed up with regime's corruption & its squandering of the nation's wealth to fund terrorism abroad."On Saturday, the president tweeted two video clips of his
speech at the United Nations General Assembly in September, in which he called the Iranian government an
"oppressive regime" and suggested that Iran's leaders are afraid of their own citizens.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi responded to Trump's amped-up support in a state television report Saturday by insisting that "Iranian people give no credit to the deceitful and opportunist remarks of U.S. officials or Mr. Trump,"
according to The Associated Press.
Protests first broke out in Mashhad, Iran's second-largest city, earlier this week when demonstrators swarmed the streets in protest of
rising food and gas prices,
high unemployment and the declining economy, according to
The Washington Post and CNN.
The rally sparked more protests,
drawing thousands of protesters in cities across Iran, including its capital, Tehran.
News reports and videos that purportedly showed the demonstrations suggest that some of the rallies have turned
violent.
It is the largest display of civil unrest in the country since the protests after Iran's disputed 2009 presidential election.
After Trump tweeted Friday that the Iranian government should respect its people's rights to express themselves, Iran's state-run TV service addressed the widespread protests with a message Saturday.
"
Counterrevolution groups and foreign media are continuing their organized efforts to misuse the people's economic and livelihood problems and their legitimate demands to provide an opportunity for unlawful gatherings and possibly chaos," state TV said,
according to AP.
Comment: Iranians have good reason to protest. Rouhani's policies have not helped the Iranian economy, unemployment is high, many aren't receiving their paychecks. And while Iran's theocracy is
much milder than it was in the 80s, it's still a theocracy. But all that is beside the point. Protests are normal. But when such protests happen in a country that happens to be a U.S. enemy, said protests take on an extra dimension of importance. Stoked on by shady actors and intelligence assets, they are weaponized as tools for regime change and used to tarnish the government's reputation even further - witness Ukraine 4 years ago. (Protests in the U.S., by contrast, are put down or ignored as the ravings of bunch of mentally deranged rabble.) The timing of these protests, their relatively low turnout, and the involvement of the MEK terrorist organization all should raise an eyebrow or two. See:
Comment: Iranians have good reason to protest. Rouhani's policies have not helped the Iranian economy, unemployment is high, many aren't receiving their paychecks. And while Iran's theocracy is much milder than it was in the 80s, it's still a theocracy. But all that is beside the point. Protests are normal. But when such protests happen in a country that happens to be a U.S. enemy, said protests take on an extra dimension of importance. Stoked on by shady actors and intelligence assets, they are weaponized as tools for regime change and used to tarnish the government's reputation even further - witness Ukraine 4 years ago. (Protests in the U.S., by contrast, are put down or ignored as the ravings of bunch of mentally deranged rabble.) The timing of these protests, their relatively low turnout, and the involvement of the MEK terrorist organization all should raise an eyebrow or two. See: