The country’s authorities promise to stand their ground in the face of mounting international pressure
Protesters gathered in a public square in Tehran on Wednesday were quickly met by security forces who charged into the crowd and reportedly beat people like “animals.” According to a source who spoke to CNN, some “500 thugs” emerged from a mosque to confront the protesters and were “”beating women madly” and “killing people like hell.” Another source told the news channel that “I see many people with broken arms, legs, heads—blood everywhere—pepper gas like war.” Even as Iranian authorities come under increasing pressure to temper their heavy-handed crackdown on protesters, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced on Wednesday his regime won’t loosen its grip on power. “Neither the establishment nor the nation will yield to pressure at any cost,” he told the country’s legislators. In dispatches to BBC News, Iranians are reporting that “police are almost everywhere in the streets” and that Tehran “is back to the way it was” before the protests.