Iran’s supreme leader has agreed to pardon “tens of thousands” of prisoners, including some of those detained for taking part in a wave of anti-regime protests that swept across the Islamic republic last year, state media reported on Sunday.

But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s ultimate decision maker, agreed that those arrested for taking part in the unrest would only be pardoned or have their punishment reduced “if they did not commit espionage for the benefit of foreigners [and] did not have direct contact with agents of foreign intelligence services,” IRNA, the state news agency said. 

It added that detainees involved in the protests could also be pardoned if they did not commit murder or injure intentionally, and did not destroy “or burn governmental, military and public facilities”.

Khamenei made the announcement as the republic marked the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the last shah.

The Islamic regime has been rocked by one of the most sustained periods of civil unrest that erupted in September after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died while in the custody of the morality police.

The authorities insisted she died of a heart attack, but many Iranians believed Amini’s death was caused by her being beaten after she was arrested for not properly wearing her compulsory hijab.

It triggered a wave of anger that swept across the nation in one of the most serious and sustained eruptions of unrest in years.

The government violently cracked down against protesters who called for regime change and the introduction of a secular democracy.

More than 300 people, including 44 children, have been killed in the unrest since, according to Amnesty International, and thousands were detained.

Iran has confirmed about 200 deaths, including security forces, and blamed foreign powers for stoking the unrest.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s ultimate decision maker. The republic has violently cracked down against protesters who called for regime change and the introduction of a secular democracy © Khamenei.IR/AFP/Getty Images

The regime has shown few signs that it is willing to make any significant compromises, and has executed four protesters, further souring the grim mood in the republic.

Iranians are also grappling with rising social and economic grievances with inflation surging to more than 40 per cent as the country’s economy is strangled by hundreds of US sanctions.

The authorities’ violent crackdown on protesters, as well as Iran’s decision to sell armed drones to Moscow, which Russian forces have used in the war in Ukraine, has caused Iran’s already fraught relations with the west to plummet to new lows.

Dozens of European nationals — mainly French and German — have also been arrested in Iran, some of whom were detained after the protests erupted, according to western diplomats. It is believed to be the highest number of westerners ever detained in the republic.

In a sign of the west’s hardening stance towards the republic, the EU is exploring legal options to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation.

The move was supported by France and Germany, which along with the UK, are signatories to the moribund 2015 nuclear deal Tehran signed with world powers.

The UK is already conducting its own review of whether to impose the designation on the Revolutionary Guards, the most powerful wing of Iran’s state security apparatus.

Analysts have warned that if the Revolutionary Guards is designated it would risk ending any lingering hopes to revive nuclear talks between Iran and the west.

The EU was brokering indirect talks between the Biden administration and Tehran in the hope of saving the nuclear accord, which former US president Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned in 2018. But there have been no discussions since September, when Iran was blamed for rejecting a draft agreement to save the deal that had been agreed by the other signatories.



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