Iran president accuses US of ‘destabilization’ amid protests

Iran’s president accused the U.S. on Thursday of conducting a “failed policy of destabilization” targeting his nation after Iranians in cities nationwide protested the death of a 22-year-old woman in the custody of the country’s morality police.
President Ebrahim Raisi’s repeated comments have tried to blame the demonstrations sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini as a Western plot, even as school-age protesters remove their mandatory headscarves, or hijabs. They come after protests in cities across Iran on Wednesday, with videos circulating of security forces apparently firing toward demonstrators and using violence to put down the dissent.
The protests have become one of the greatest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the country’s 2009 Green Movement. Raisi, a hard-line protege of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, described them as a plot against Iran by its enemies abroad. Raisi’s remarks came Thursday as he spoke to a conference in Astana, Kazakhstan.