TEHRAN -- Iran’s president paid a visit Thursday to Kurdistan province and urged people to thwart the “enemy” which has been stoking riots in the country.
Protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin, on September 16 have been hijacked by rioters and terrorists to wreak havoc across the country.
The United States and its allies, including Britain and the occupying regime of Israel, have been fomenting the riots that an Iranian general said this week had so far killed more than 300 people.
President Ebrahim Raisi traveled on Thursday to Sanandaj city in Kurdistan, Amini’s home province, for the launch of a drinking water project.
“During the recent riots, the enemies miscalculated in believing that they could cause chaos, insecurity, and riots,” he said in a televised speech.
“But they did not know that Kurdistan had sacrificed the blood of thousands of martyrs and that its inhabitants had in the past defeated the enemy,” he added, referring to the 1980-88 Iraqi war on Iran.
“People are facing economic and social problems, but they know how to face the enemy with their solidarity,” Raisi said.
“The new generation, who live in this region, like their mothers and fathers who foiled the plans of the enemy, will do the same and prove that they will not follow the will of the enemies, especially the United States.”
The enemy, he said, is enraged by Iran’s “scientific developments, universities, nuclear technology, defense industries, science, technology, relations with neighboring countries and the world, oil and non-oil exports, and our share in the trade and economy of the region.”
The theme was also brought up by the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps.
“Today, they (the enemies) are all trying to sow the seeds of despair in the hearts of the youth,” Major General Hussein Salami said.
“We must take measures to serve the people, because poverty and misery are also part of the enemies of the country,” he said during a trip to the southern city of Shiraz.
The commander said Iran is on the path to progress and that one of the enemies’ plots is to “sow the seeds of sedition in the hearts of the Iranian youths.”
“Today, we are on the path to conquer great peaks and we will not stop… This nation is strong and powerful, they want us not to make progress, not to have missiles, not to send satellites into space, not to build refineries and power plants, and they say we will give you

whatever you want, but we do not want that Iran,” Gen. Salami said.
“We want an independent, powerful Iran that can meet all its needs and defend its dignity, honor and national values and restore the rights of the oppressed people from the arrogant powers,” he noted.
He said the U.S. and the occupying regime of Israel are acting behind the scenes and playing the main role in directing the riots in Iran in order to achieve their own goals, but “the Iranian nation will stand up firm and not back down.”