Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei compared Iranian protesters to Islamic State terrorists in a post on X/Twitter on Monday.
Writing in English, Khamenei commented that "seditionists in Iran burned people alive. They beheaded people. They committed the very same atrocities that Islamic State committed."
Khamenei, who refers to the protests as "sedition," stated that a defining feature of the protests was violence, and linked a statement by US President Donald Trump, blaming him for "creating ISIS."
The Iranian leader went on to claim that the protests in Iran were orchestrated by the United States and by "Zionists."
"I was informed through a certain channel that the CIA & Mossad deployed all of their resources into the field! Nevertheless, they were defeated. The sedition's plan was developed abroad, and it was managed from abroad," Khamenei claimed.
The "ringleaders" of the protest movement had been trained by the "US and Zionists" who tasked them with "engineered killings," he accused.
"When we say the sedition was orchestrated by the US, it isn't merely a claim," he comments, citing Trump's encouragement of protesters by telling them to "keep going" and reminding them that he is "coming to help."
What Khamenei refers to as "sedition" will continue to occur until the "Iranian nation reaches a point where the enemy is left hopeless." Iran "will reach that point," he affirmed, noting the law enforcement, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij paramilitaries "carried out their duties in full, but it was the people themselves who trampled the fire of sedition into ashes."
The goal of the "sedition" was to "destroy the centers effective in the country's governance," and to "disrupt the country's security," he claimed. "They attacked the police, IRGC bases, government institutions, and banks... When security is gone, nothing is left. When there's no security, there's no production, no schools, no research, no scientific knowledge, and no progress," he concluded.
Confirmed death toll in Iranian protests nears 7,000, HRANA data shows
Iranian protests entered their 37th day on Monday, with activists, including the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, recording death tolls and suppression from the Islamic Regime.
As of Sunday night, 6,842 people were confirmed as killed during the protests, per HRANA's data, with 6,425 of these being protesters, and 146 being under the age of 18.
An additional 11,280 cases remain under review by the agency.
HRANA also noted that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian's office published an official list naming 2,986 individuals killed during the protests - a lower number than the 3,117 that the president's office previously mentioned.
The organization also noted that the president's office's list included mistakes such as spelling errors, duplicate entries, and incomplete data entry, per initial reviews.