Iran’s leader says rioters ‘must be put in their place’ as death toll rises

Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday addressed the protests rattling his nation, insisting that “rioters must be put in their place”.

The comments by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may be a green light to authorities to pursue a more aggressive approach to the demonstrations, which have been going on for a week.

The protests take their root in the country’s ailing economy as Iran’s rial currency now trades at around 1.4 million to the dollar.

“We talk to protesters, the officials must talk to them,” Ayatollah Khamenei told an audience in Tehran, Iran’s capital. “But there is no benefit to talking to rioters. Rioters must be put in their place.”

Violence surrounding protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic’s dipping economy killed two more people, authorities said on Saturday, raising the death toll in the demonstrations to at least 10 as they showed no signs of stopping.

The new deaths follow US President Donald Trump warning to Iran on Friday that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters” the United States “will come to their rescue”.

While it remains unclear how and if Mr Trump will intervene, his comments sparked an immediate, angry response from officials within the theocracy threatening to target American troops in the Mideast.

The weeklong protests have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations.

However, the protests have yet to be as widespread and intense as those surrounding the death of Ms Amini, who was detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.

The deaths overnight into Saturday involved a new level of violence. In Qom, home to the country’s major Shia seminaries, a grenade exploded, killing a man there, the state-owned IRAN newspaper reported.

It quoted security officials alleging the man carried the grenade to attack people in the city, some 130 kilometres (80 miles) south of the capital, Tehran.

Online videos from Qom purportedly showed fires in the street overnight.

The second death happened in the town of Harsin, some 370 kilometres (230 miles) southwest of Tehran. There, the newspaper said a member of the Basij, the all-volunteer arm of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, died in a gun and knife attack in the town in Kermanshah province.

Demonstrations have reached more than 100 locations in 22 of Iran’s 31 provinces, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported.

Iran’s civilian government under reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has been trying to signal it wants to negotiate with protesters.

However, Mr Pezeshkian has acknowledged there is not much he can do as Iran’s rial has rapidly depreciated, with one dollar now costing some 1.4 million rials. That sparked the initial protests.

The protests, taking root in economic issues, have heard demonstrators chant against Iran’s theocracy as well. Tehran has had little luck in propping up its economy in the months since its June war with Israel in which the US also bombed Iranian nuclear sites in Iran.

Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic programme to ease sanctions.

However, those talks have yet to happen as Mr Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned Tehran against reconstituting its atomic programme.