US, ‘Israel’ Slipped Arms into Iran To Wreak Havoc During Riots – Amir Abdollahian

By Staff, Agencies

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said the United States and the ‘Israeli’ occupation regime slipped firearms past Iranian borders during the recent riots that took place across the Islamic Republic as means of wreaking havoc throughout the country.

Amir Abdollahian made the remarks in an interview with National Public Radio [NPR], which is a network of around 900 public radio stations in the United States. The interview was conducted at the Iranian Foreign Ministry in Tehran by the radio channel's host Mary Louise Kelly on Wednesday.

"American and ‘Israeli’ armaments [were] entered [into] the country via some of our less stable neighbors," he said.

"In fact, what they [the US and the ‘Israeli’ regime] did was that they wreaked havoc among mobs and masses, and, in effect, resorted to the armaments in question [to further their goals]," the top diplomat noted.

The unrest broke out last year in Tehran and then spread across the country after the death of a young Iranian woman, named Mahsa Amini.

Amini, who had been taken to a police station in the Iranian capital to receive educational training on Hijab and dress code rules, was reported to have suddenly collapsed on the ground at the station and then put into an ambulance to be transferred to the hospital.

The police later released the CCTV footage of the young woman at the station, which fully confirmed the veracity of the law enforcement's reports on her death.

Amir Abdollahian rejected the NPR's claim that "tens of thousands" had been arrested during the riots, and that "hundreds of people have been killed."

He rather put the number of the arrestees at "hundreds," identifying those who had been rounded up as only "those who had had a hand in the street riots," and affirming that no student had been apprehended either at the universities or on their premises.

Rejecting, what the NPR host referred to as an alleged hundreds-strong death toll during the riots, Amir Abdollahian asserted that "The number of the fatalities during the riots have not been stated correctly," adding, "Despite intense tension during the riots, the [Iranian] police were not allowed to carry firearms."

The Iranian foreign minister, meanwhile, addressed the issue of a recent decree by Leader of the Islamic Revolution His Eminence Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei, which allowed the pardoning of a considerable number of those who had been arrested during the unrest, attributing the decree to the Leader's "special attention to the issue of clemency and mercy."

Hundreds were pardoned and released on the back of the decree, the foreign minister said, "save for those who have committed murder or other serious crimes."