TEHRAN -- President Ebrahim Raisi on Saturday hailed Iran’s Islamic Republic as a guarantor of rights and freedoms, defending the establishment that weathered weeks of foreign-stoked riots and vandalism.
A top state security body said that 200 people, including members of the security forces, had lost their lives in the riots.
The protests were ignited by the death of 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini in hospital after attending a class at a police station in Tehran, but rapidly manipulated by rioters and terrorists to wreak havoc across the country through attacking medical teams, security forces and public property.
Officials have said foreign enemies, including the United States, Saudi Arabia and the occupying regime of Israel, are behind the riots.
“Iran has the most progressive constitution in the world” because it marries “ideals with democracy,” President Raisi said in a speech to parliamentarians, quoting an unidentified African lawyer he said he met several years ago.
“The constitution guarantees the (existence) of the Islamic system,” he said, adding that it also “guarantees fundamental rights and legitimate freedoms.”
The judiciary’s Mizan news agency quoted the interior ministry’s state security council as saying 200 people lost their lives in the recent riots.
It said the deceased include security forces, those killed in “terrorist acts”, those killed by foreign-affiliated groups and framed as killed by the state, rioters and armed anti-revolutionary elements who were members of secessionist groups.
The security body also cited innocent people who have died in conditions of security disarray.
It emphasized the role of foreign intervention in the protests, saying the country has been dealing with a “hybrid war” waged by adversary states and terrorist media groups.
“What is being witnessed today by the people is not civil protest but destruction, violence and insecurity by a minority of rioters,” it said.
The security body touched on the accumulation of a large number of economic demands, saying the main effort of the administration has been to solve them.
“The administration has pursued multilateral diplomacy, promoting relations with its neighbors, joining economic alliances with emerging powers, and negotiating with the West” with the aim of securing national interests and removing oppressive sanctions, it said.