Raisi urges Iranians to thwart 'enemy' on visit to Kurdistan protest hub

Iran's president paid a visit Thursday to Kurdistan province, the cradle of protests over Mahsa Amini's death, and urged people to thwart the "enemy" which his government accuses of stoking the unrest.

The country has been gripped by protests that erupted when Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin, died in custody on September 16 after her arrest for an alleged breach of the country's dress code for women.

It accuses its enemy the United States and its allies, including Britain and Israel, of fomenting the street violence that an Iranian general said this week had so far killed more than 300 people.

Ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi travelled on Thursday to Sanandaj city in Kurdistan, Amini's home province and an epicentre of the protests, for the launch of a drinking water project.

"During the recent riots, the enemies miscalculated in believing that they could cause chaos, insecurity, and riots," he said in a televised speech.

"But they did not know that Kurdistan had sacrificed the blood of thousands of martyrs and that its inhabitants had in the past defeated the enemy," he added, referring to the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

"People are facing economic and social problems, but they know how to face the enemy with their solidarity," Raisi said.

"The new generation, who live in this region, like their mothers and fathers who foiled the plans of the enemy, will do the same and prove that they will not follow the will of the enemies, especially the United States."

Raisi's visit to Kurdistan, which borders Iraq, comes at a time of heightened tensions in the western province after more than two months of protests sparked by Amini's death.

It was a theme also brought up on Thursday by the head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

"Today, they (the enemies) are all trying to sow the seeds of despair in the hearts of the youth," Major General Hossein Salami was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.

"We must take measures to serve the people, because poverty and misery are also part of the enemies of the country," he said during a trip to the southern city of Shiraz.

Since the nationwide protests erupted, Iranian officials have accused Kurdish opposition groups exiled in northern Iraq of fuelling the unrest and the Islamic republic has repeatedly launched deadly cross-border strikes.

On Monday, Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said "more than 300 martyrs and people" had been killed in the Amini protests.

Oslo-based non-governmental organisation Iran Human Rights said on Tuesday that at least 448 people had been "killed by security forces in the ongoing nationwide protests".

Thousands of Iranians and around 40 foreigners have been arrested over the unrest and more than 2,000 people have been charged, according to judicial authorities.