10 minutes agoShareSaveJack BurgessandGhoncheh Habibiazad,BBC PersianShareSave<\/p>\n
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has accused the US and Donald Trump of being responsible for "casualties, damage and slander" in his country during recent protests.<\/p>\n
In a speech on Saturday, Khamenei acknowledged that thousands of people had been killed during recent unrest, "some in an inhuman, savage manner" but blamed the deaths on "seditionists".<\/p>\n
The US president has urged Iranian anti-government demonstrators to "keep protesting" and threatened military intervention if security forces kill them.<\/p>\n
Protests in Iran have claimed 3,090 lives, according to US-based Iranian Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), in unrest that started over the economy on 28 December.<\/p>\n
Since then, the protests have turned into calls for the end of the rule of Iran's supreme leader.<\/p>\n
The Iranian government has called the demonstrations "riots" backed by Iran's enemies.<\/p>\n
Protesters have been met with deadly force and videos of security forces shooting at demonstrations<\/a> have been authenticated by both BBC Persian and BBC Verify.<\/p>\n There has also been a near-total shutdown of the internet and communication services in Iran. On Saturday overall connectivity remained at about 2% of ordinary levels, according to cyber monitor NetBlocks.<\/p>\n There have been fewer reports of unrest in recent days but with internet access still restricted developments on the ground remain unclear. <\/p>\n During his speech on Saturday, Khamenei also said Iran considered President Trump to be a "criminal" and said the US must be "held accountable" for recent unrest.<\/p>\n He also claimed on social media that "America's goal is to swallow Iran". <\/p>\n Trump has not yet responded to the supreme leader and the BBC has approached the White House for a <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/a>Iran<\/a>Iran-US relations<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Iran supreme leader blames US for deadly protests10 minutes agoShareSaveJack BurgessandGhoncheh Habibiazad,BBC PersianShareSaveIranian leader press office via Getty ImagesIran's Supreme Leader, A…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bbc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp2.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What next for Iran's Supreme Leader?<\/h2>\n
Exiled crown prince urges world to help protesters topple Iran's government<\/h2>\n
Trump aims to keep everyone guessing over Iran action<\/h2>\n