PARIS — The
US will impose “further costs”
on Iran for its lethal crackdown on protests sparked by the death of Mahsa
Amini, President Joe Biden announced, drawing accusations of “hypocrisy” from
Iran on Tuesday.
اضافة اعلان
Amini, 22, was pronounced dead on September 16, days
after the notorious morality police detained the
Kurdish Iranian for allegedly
breaching rules requiring women to wear hijab headscarves and modest clothes.
Anger over her death has sparked the biggest wave of
protests to rock Iran in almost three years and a state crackdown that has seen
scores of protesters killed and more than 1,000 arrested.
“This week, the US will be imposing further costs on
perpetrators of violence against peaceful protesters,” Biden said in a
statement Monday. “We will continue holding Iranian officials accountable and
supporting the rights of Iranians to protest freely.”
Biden said he was “gravely concerned” about reports
of the intensifying repression of protesters and said Washington stood with
“all the citizens of Iran who are inspiring the world with their bravery”.
‘Hypocrisy’
“Women, Life, Freedom,” the
young female protesters chanted as they marched down the central strip of a
busy highway in Marivan in footage that AFP has not independently verified.
The US president gave no indication of what measures
he was considering against Iran, which is already under crippling US economic
sanctions largely related to its controversial nuclear program.
Iran on Tuesday accused the US leader of “hypocrisy”
in invoking human rights to impose fresh punitive measures.
“It would have been better for Mr Joe Biden to think
a little about the human rights record of his own country before making
humanitarian gestures, although hypocrisy does not need to be thought through,”
foreign ministry spokesman
Nasser Kanani said in an Instagram post, reported by
Iranian media.
“The US president should be concerned about the
numerous sanctions ... against the Iranian nation, the sanctions whose
imposition against any nation is a clear example of a crime against humanity,”
he added.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had
Monday accused arch foes the US and Israel of fomenting the protests.
The riots “were engineered by America and the
occupying, false Zionist regime, as well as their paid agents, with the help of
some traitorous Iranians abroad”, Khamenei said.
Nuclear talks
The unrest has overshadowed
diplomatic efforts to revive a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major powers
which had come close to a breakthrough in recent months before stalling again.
But White House Press Secretary
Karine Jean-Pierre stressed that the “problems with Iran’s behavior” are separate from efforts to
revive the nuclear deal, which Washington will pursue “as long as we believe”
it is in US national security interests.
In his first public
comments on Amini’s death, 83-year-old Khamenei stressed on Monday that Iranian
police must “stand up to criminals”.
Khamenei said “some people, without proof or an
investigation, have made the streets dangerous, burned the Koran, removed hijabs
from veiled women and set fire to mosques and cars”.
He added that “this is not about hijab in Iran”, and
that “many Iranian women who don’t observe the hijab perfectly are among the
steadfast supporters of the Islamic republic”.
On Tuesday, an official said singer Shervin Hajipour
— arrested after his song “Baraye” (“For”), with lyrics taken from social media
posts about the reasons people were protesting, went viral — had been released
on bail.
Iran has repeatedly accused outside forces of
stoking the protests and last week said nine foreign nationals — including from
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland — had been arrested.
At least 92 protesters have been killed so far in
the Mahsa Amini rallies, said Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights, which has
been working to assess the death toll despite internet outages and blocks on
WhatsApp, Instagram and other online services.
Amnesty International said earlier it had confirmed
53 deaths, after Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said last week that
“around 60” people had died.
At least 12 members of the security forces have been
reported killed since September 16.
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