Iran's Khamenei Recognizes Protesters' Grievances

Asa Fitch

The Wall Street Journal

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@asafitch

Jan. 9, 2018 10:18 a.m. ET

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday said citizens had the right to voice their legitimate concerns, acknowledging for the first time the grievances of protesters taking part in the biggest wave of demonstrations in the country this decade.

Mr. Khamenei took a conciliatory tone during a speech in the city of Qom, perhaps reflecting the ruling system’s bid to accommodate working-class complaints about high inflation, high unemployment and other persistent economic problems. Many of the people who have protested in recent days are from Iranian hard-liners’ own political power base, and have been raising their voices against what they see as a system that has left them behind economically.

“Nobody is against public protests,” Mr. Khamenei said, according to his official website. “Their voices should be attended, heard and responded to. We should all pursue that.”

Iranians should realize that the authorities “are not asleep,” he added, while acknowledging that there were shortcomings in the effort to address people’s problems. He also acknowledged a spate of protests over the past year targeting unregulated credit institutions that failed, erasing many people’s savings.

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“Iranian people have lived a life of dignity and honor, and by God’s grace their economic problems will be solved!” Mr. Khamenei said, according to a tweet from his official account.

Mr. Khamenei, who has final say in matters of state within Iran’s ruling system, had earlier blamed the unrest on Iran’s enemies. He again lashed out at the U.S., Israel, American allies in the Middle East and Iranian dissidents for allegedly provoking the unrest.

He also denied President Donald Tru mp’s assertion in a tweet on Dec. 30 that the establishment was afraid of its own people, or that Iranians were starving.

U.S. officials, he added, should know that they missed their target, and would fail if they targeted Iran again. Mr. Trump, he said, “seems to be a very unstable man” and “must realize that these extreme and psychotic episodes won’t be left without a response.”

He didn’t elaborate on what that response might be. The U.S. has denied playing a role in the unrest, the largest since millions of the so-called Green Movement protesters took to the streets in 2009 over the disputed re-election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, described Mr. Khamenei’s rhetoric as an attempt to split what was left of the antigovernment movement by feigning concern about Iranians’ well-being.

“Given the virulently antiregime slogans from what should have been their social base—the urban and rural poor—elites in Iran are realizing how fragile their political system really is,” he said.

The latest round of protests began on Dec. 28 in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city, and quickly spread to dozens of cities across the country.

While they focused at first on high prices and joblessness, the demonstrations evolved into a broader critique of the ruling system Mr. Khamenei heads. “Death to Khamenei!” has been a common refrain at antigovernment rallies. Some of the protests have turned violent as security forces clashed with protesters. In some cases, protesters torched government buildings or overturned police cars.

The unrest, however, appears to have waned in recent days following a crackdown by security forces. More than 20 people were confirmed killed in the unrest, and hundreds have been arrested, although Iranian authorities have said many were later released.

The full extent of the unrest has been hard to gauge because the state-dominated media hasn’t reported extensively on it, and because the government has blocked tools protesters have used to organize and share video of protests, including the Telegram messaging app that is used by about 40 million Iranians.

Write to Asa Fitch at asa.fitch@wsj.com

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