Khamenei blames foreign powers and diaspora for protests in Iran

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed "foreign powers" and the Iranian diaspora for fomenting protests across the country that erupted in the autumn of last year, in an address on Sunday.

Khamenei, the most powerful man in the country, accused parts of the global Iranian diaspora of treason, saying they had "turned their backs on the country." The 84-year-old used the word "unrest" to refer to the protests.

"The people who have departed from here have become mercenaries and agents of the policies of Iran's enemies," he said.

Khamenei was speaking to an audience of thousands on the 34th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 revolution, at his mausoleum in the south of Tehran.

The world's major powers had ganged up on Iran for years, Khamenei said. "The difference is that the Iranian nation today is stronger, and they have become weaker."

Countrywide demonstrations that followed the death in custody in September last year of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman detained by the moral police for failing to wear her hijab correctly, sparked anti-government mass protests.

The protests initially focused on opposition to the obligation on women to cover their hair when in public but then shifted to demands for Iran's theocratic system to fall. While calm has largely returned to the country, many women continue to ignore the hijab rules.