Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said a...

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said a wave of student protests was the work of pro-US enemies of the Islamic state and warned they would be suppressed if necessary. "At a time when people need unity a group is finding excuses to create chaos in the universities," he told tens of thousands of worshippers during a Friday prayers sermon at Tehran University. While initially focused on reformist academic Hashem Aghajari's death sentence for blasphemy, the student protests provided a platform for voicing a range of demands including the release of other jailed academics, journalists and student leaders. "Those who accuse the Islamic system of despotism and being against freedom and human rights is either the enemy himself or has been deceived by the enemy," said Khamenei, who has ultimate power in Iran. "Everyone knows who the enemy is. Today the enemy of the nation and the government and the system and of our country's independence and freedom is the arrogant American government," he said. Worshippers, crammed inside the university and surrounding streets, responded with chants of "Death to America" and "Our leader, we are ready." In 1999, a similar wave of student protests was brutally suppressed by security forces backed by radical militia groups and Khamenei warned that the same could happen again. "The people came onto the scene and prevented them (the protests) and they're ready to do the same again." But he added that nothing should be done which would give "the enemy an excuse to create chaos in the country."