Iran’s President Tries to Assuage Anger as Protests Continue

A Lebanese activist holds a poster depicting deceased Mahsa Amini during a protest organized by feminist groups in support of women protesters in Iran, following Amini's death, outside the Lebanese National Museum in Beirut, Lebanon, 02 October 2022. (EPA)
A Lebanese activist holds a poster depicting deceased Mahsa Amini during a protest organized by feminist groups in support of women protesters in Iran, following Amini's death, outside the Lebanese National Museum in Beirut, Lebanon, 02 October 2022. (EPA)
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Iran’s President Tries to Assuage Anger as Protests Continue

A Lebanese activist holds a poster depicting deceased Mahsa Amini during a protest organized by feminist groups in support of women protesters in Iran, following Amini's death, outside the Lebanese National Museum in Beirut, Lebanon, 02 October 2022. (EPA)
A Lebanese activist holds a poster depicting deceased Mahsa Amini during a protest organized by feminist groups in support of women protesters in Iran, following Amini's death, outside the Lebanese National Museum in Beirut, Lebanon, 02 October 2022. (EPA)

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Tuesday appealed for national unity and tried to allay anger against the country’s rulers, even as the anti-government protests that have engulfed the country for weeks continued to spread to universities and high schools.

Raisi acknowledged that the country had “weaknesses and shortcomings,” but repeated the official line that the unrest sparked last month by the death of a 22-year-old woman in the custody of the country’s morality police was nothing short of a plot by Iran’s enemies.

“Today the country’s determination is aimed at cooperation to reduce people’s problems,” he told a parliament session. “Unity and national integrity are necessities that render our enemy hopeless.”

His claims echoed those of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who blamed the United States and Israel, the country’s adversaries, for inciting the unrest in his first remarks on the nationwide protests on Monday. It's a familiar tactic for Iran's leaders, who have remained mistrustful of Western influence since the 1979 revolution and commonly blame domestic problems on foreign enemies without offering evidence.

The protests, which emerged in response to the death of Mahsa Amini after her arrest for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code, have embroiled dozens of cities across the country and evolved into the most widespread challenge to Iran’s leadership in years. A series of mounting crises have festered and helped fuel public rage, including the country's political repression, ailing economy and global isolation.

Iran’s security forces have sought to disperse demonstrations with tear gas, metal pellets, and in some cases live fire, rights groups say. Iran’s state TV reports that violent confrontations between protesters and the police have killed at least 41 people, but human rights groups say the number is much higher.

As the new academic year officially began this week, the demonstrations spread quickly to university campuses, long considered sanctuaries in times of turmoil. Videos on social media showed students expressing solidarity with peers who had been arrested and calling for the end of the republic. Roiled by the unrest, many universities moved classes online this week.

The prestigious Sharif University of Technology in Tehran became a battlefield on Sunday as security forces surrounded the campus from all sides and fired tear gas at protesters who were holed up inside a parking lot, preventing them from leaving. The student union reported that police arrested hundreds of students, although many were later released.

In one video on Monday, students marched and chanted, “Jailed students must be freed!” at Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran. In another, students streamed through Khayyam University in the conservative city of Mashhad, shouting, “Sharif University has become a jail! Evin Prison has become a university!” — referring to Iran's notorious prison in Tehran.

Protests also appeared to grip gender-segregated high schools across Iran on Monday, where groups of young girls waved their state-mandated hijabs and chanted “Woman! Life! Freedom!” in the city of Karaj west of the capital and in the Kurdish city of Sanandaj, according to widely shared footage.

The response by Iran's security forces has sparked widespread global condemnation. On Monday, President Joe Biden said his administration was “gravely concerned about reports of the intensifying violent crackdown on peaceful protesters in Iran, including students and women.”

Furious over Iran’s response to the demonstrations, the British foreign office summoned the Iranian ambassador in London.

“The violence leveled at protests in Iran by the security forces is truly shocking,” said British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.



Kremlin Says Europe Will Feel the Recoil from Its 'Illegal' Sanctions on Russia

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with the heads of international news agencies at the newly renovated St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with the heads of international news agencies at the newly renovated St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
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Kremlin Says Europe Will Feel the Recoil from Its 'Illegal' Sanctions on Russia

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with the heads of international news agencies at the newly renovated St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with the heads of international news agencies at the newly renovated St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, June 19, 2025. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

The Kremlin said in remarks published on Sunday that the tougher the sanctions imposed on Russia by Europe, the more painful the recoil would be for Europe's own economies as Russia had grown resistant to such "illegal" sanctions.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 triggered a wave of Western sanctions on Russia and it is by far the most sanctioned major economy in the world.

The West said that it hoped its sanctions would force President Vladimir Putin to seek peace in Ukraine, and though the economy contracted in 2022, it grew in 2023 and 2024 at faster rates than the European Union.

The European Commission on June 10 proposed a new round of sanctions against Russia, targeting Moscow's energy revenues, its banks and its military industry, though the United States has so far refused to toughen its own sanctions.

Asked about remarks by Western European leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron that toughening sanctions would force Russia to negotiate an end to the war, the Kremlin said only logic and arguments could force Russia to negotiate.

"The more serious the package of sanctions, which, I repeat, we consider illegal, the more serious will be the recoil from a gun to the shoulder. This is a double-edged sword," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television.

Peskov told state television's top Kremlin correspondent, Pavel Zarubin, that he did not doubt the EU would impose further sanctions but that Russia had built up "resistance" to such sanctions.

President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that any additional EU sanctions on Russia would simply hurt Europe more - and pointed out that Russia's economy grew at 4.3% in 2024 compared to euro zone growth of 0.9%.