Advisor to Iranian President Criticizes IRGC Commander's Remarks on Protests

Hossam al-Din Ashna, advisor to the Iranian president, criticized the remarks of the IRGC commander who stated that "the protests are over" in a message on Twitter. Ashna wrote: "CNN and others widely covered the statements of the dear commander of the IRGC regarding the end of unrest; this is not beneficial for Iran's global image. Naturally, dealing with violence in a protest is the police's job, and informing about it is the Ministry of Interior's duty, not the IRGC, which has much more serious responsibilities." Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of the IRGC, stated on Wednesday on Iranian state television: "Now we can say that it is the day of the end of the sedition of 96." Jafari claimed that if "security preparations had not been in place, the intensity of this sedition would have been much broader." He added that "killing was one of the main programs of the seditionists and their masters in the recent unrest." The commander of the IRGC asserted that "they wanted to seriously and purposefully take the lives of people, whether children or adults, and blame it on the Islamic government of Iran." Anti-government protests in Iran, which began in Khorasan Razavi in response to rising prices and economic conditions, have recently spread to over 90 cities in Iran, resulting in at least 22 deaths and the arrest of over a thousand protesters. Abdolrahim Mousavi, the commander of the Iranian army, referred to the recent street protests as a "petty sedition" and praised the police and Basij for what he called "suffocating it in its infancy." Mousavi mentioned in a message to Hossein Ashtari, the commander of the police, that the army would accompany these forces if necessary. In this message, it was stated that "this blind sedition was so petty that it was merely suffocated with part of the police's power in its infancy." Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, the Minister of Interior of the twelfth government, claimed that despite the number of deaths and arrests, these protests were resolved "with minimal costs, at the highest level of tolerance and in the best way."