Iranian president calls for unity as protests spread to universities and schools

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi called for national unity on Tuesday as anti-government protests spread to universities and high schools.

Unrest has rocked Iran in the past few weeks after the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, in the custody of the country’s so-called morality police. She was arrested after allegedly failing to observe the republic's strict dress code for women.

Mr Raisi said his country had “weaknesses and shortcomings,” but repeated the official line that Ms Amini’s death was a plot by Iran’s enemies.

“Today the country’s determination is aimed at cooperation to reduce people’s problems,” he told a parliament session. “Unity and national integrity are necessities that render our enemy hopeless.”

In response to comments by US President Joe Biden, who said he would impose “further costs” in retaliation for the protests, Tehran accused Washington of “hypocrisy” on human rights.

“It would have been better for Mr Joe Biden to think a little about the human rights record of his own country before making humanitarian gestures, although hypocrisy does not need to be thought through,” foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said in an Instagram post, reported by Iranian media.

“The US president should be concerned about the numerous sanctions … against the Iranian nation, the sanctions whose imposition against any nation is a clear example of a crime against humanity,” he added.

Late on Monday, the White House issued a statement in which Mr Biden said he would impose unspecified additional measures against Iran later this week on top of the crippling sanctions already in force over its nuclear activities.

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“This week, the United States will be imposing further costs on perpetrators of violence against peaceful protesters. We will continue holding Iranian officials accountable and supporting the rights of Iranians to protest freely,” Mr Biden said.

“The United States stands with Iranian women and all the citizens of Iran who are inspiring the world with their bravery.”

It comes as Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday accused the US and Israel of fomenting the unrest rocking the country.

“I say clearly that these riots and the insecurity were engineered by America and the occupying, false Zionist regime, as well as their paid agents,” he said.

Demonstrations across the country have spread to university campuses, which are considered sanctuaries in times of unrest.

Videos on social media showed students expressing solidarity with peers who had been arrested and calling for the end of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Many universities moved classes online this week.

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Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.