After two and a half months of protests leading to hundreds of deaths, including an especially high number of teenagers, Iran has continued to claim that foreign hands are behind the unrest in the country.
Gholam Reza Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Basij Organization, addressed the protests that began on Sept. 16 when a young woman died in police custody after being detained by the country’s morality police for her loose-fitting hijab. Soleimani said that Iran’s enemies, particularly the United States and Israel, have given up trying to confront Iran directly and are now “headed toward a hybrid war with the use of media and psychological war by deceiving the people of Iran.”
