TEHRAN -- Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi says some of the rioters in recent spree of vandalism and violence had been receiving money in their bank accounts every 15 minutes.
Speaking at a local conference at Tehran’s Islamic Azad University Science and Research Branch on Thursday, the minister said there were some foreign-backed organized and trained individuals who acted with extreme violence during the recent riots.
Some of these individuals have been trained in foreign countries and received funds from there, he said.
“In the case of one person who was arrested in front of the Interior Ministry, it was said that around 25 to 30 million tomans (roughly $750 to $900) were being deposited to the person’s bank account every 10 to 15 minutes.”
There were many circles active in the unrest, including organized rings of the Zionist regime, he said.
Some of these circles were paying 500,000 tomans (roughly $15) for each Molotov cocktail to those producing them, noted the minister.
Protests over the death of Amini erupted first in her native province of Kordestan and later in several cities, including the capital. Amini fainted at a police station and was pronounced dead days later on September 16 at a Tehran hospital.
Although Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi immediately ordered a thorough investigation into the case, the protests soon turned violent, with rioters fatally attacking policemen and indulging in vandalism against public property in several cities.
The foreign-backed violent riots have also claimed dozens of lives from both security forces and ordinary people as the Western media and Persian-language news networks continue to provoke riots in Iran.
An official report last Friday by Iran’s Legal Medicine Organization said that Amini’s controversial death was caused by an illness rather than alleged blows to the head or other vital body organs.
Vahidi referred to Western media’s efforts to harm the Islamic Revolution and Iranian people, noting that 1504 articles were published about the victim in the US alone in one week. From September 16 to 24, the minister maintained, 720 articles were written on the topic in the UK, 830 in Germany, 655 in France, 207 in Spain, and 497 in Italy.
Pointing to figures indicating that 240 million tweets have been posted on this issue, the minister said thousands of bots are behind this.
They are replacing “the truth with the untruth” to an extent that some people believe it, he lamented.
The Iranian minister also provided figures about the number of
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people taking to the streets in recent days. In spite of all the efforts by enemies, 45,000 people participated in demonstrations on the most crowded day and many provoked youths were among them, he said.
Noting that there are 3.2 million students at Iranian universities, the minister said only 18,000 students participated in demonstrations on the most crowded day while the Western media tried to portray that all the students were present.
Currently, Vahidi continued, the issue is not about hijab but as the Leader of the Islamic Revolution said, the enemies oppose a powerful Iran since they are seeing the growth of the country in all fields.

Canada Sanctions More Iranians

Canada on Thursday imposed a fresh raft of sanctions against Iranian individuals and various bodies over what it called human rights violations in the Islamic Republic.
The measures affected 17 people, including former foreign minister Muhammad Javad Zarif and former defense chief Brigadier General Amir Hatami as well as three entities.
Announcing the new sanctions, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly accused Tehran of pursuing an “agenda of violence, fear, and propaganda.”
She alleged that the rioters “are courageously demanding a future where their human rights will be fully respected.”
This marks the second time the Canadian government levies sanctions against the Islamic Republic since the onset of the riots.
Earlier in the month, Ottawa imposed sanctions on a wide range of Iranian institutions and persons, including the 24-hour English-language Press TV, under the similar pretext of “rights violations.”
The measures listed 25 individuals and nine entities, including officials in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Ministry of Intelligence.