Ever since the recent murder of a 22-year-old Iranian woman by the morality police after she was found not “properly” wearing her headscarf, protests have erupted in the streets of Tehran and other locations around the country. The government has been beating down and/or arresting the protesters, but some of them have continued to take to the streets. Yesterday, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, had clearly had enough of the unrest. He issued a blistering message to let everyone know who the real villains are and why the protests need to stop. This isn’t even about head scarfs, you see. It’s all a plot by the United States to destabilize Iran’s government. Oh, and the Jews too, of course. (Free Beacon)

Protests have swept across Iran since the regime’s morality police murdered a 22-year-old woman for not properly wearing her head covering, which is required by law under the theocratic regime. Since her death, Iranians across the country have been protesting Khamenei’s government and threatening to topple it.

“The young girl’s death was a tragic incident that saddened us too,” the supreme leader wrote. “But the right reaction to it wasn’t for some to create insecurity for [people], burn the Quran, Mosques, banks, and [people’s] cars, & to pull off women’s scarves. These weren’t normal acts. They were planned.”

U.S. and Israeli intelligence services planned and directed the protests, according to Khamenei.

“Some individuals are against stating that certain events were designed & carried out by the enemy. They stand up to defend U.S. & Zionist intelligence services, & they use fallacious analysis & rhetoric to deny it was the word of the enemy,” he wrote.

Khamenei actually tried to claim that the young woman’s death was “a tragic incident that saddened us too.” As noted above, he then went on to say that none of this has anything to do with the Hijab. He claimed that “many Iranian women who don’t observe the Hijab perfectly are among the steadfast supporters of the Islamic Republic.”

Note the use of the phrase “observe the Hijab perfectly.” (My emphasis.) Do you see how reasonable he’s being? You ladies don’t have to wear your headscarf “perfectly.” We get it. Sometimes you’re in a hurry and you might have two, maybe three hairs sticking out. We’re not monsters, after all. Sadly, Mahsa Amini apparently had four hairs running loose, so we had to beat her to death. You know how it goes, right?

It saddens me to think that there are probably still many people in Iran who actually swallow all of this nonsense, or at least are frightened enough that they pretend to swallow it. The so-called Supreme Leader’s “morality police” who beat Mahsa Amini down were not demonstrating tolerance. She was taken into custody after the attack. Most people can survive a beating if they receive medical attention after not immediately dying at the scene. She clearly received no such help. They just let her die because some of her hair was showing.

The least surprising part of all of this is the way Khamenei yet again chose to blame America and Israel. Why not? We’re the Great Satan and everything in the world is the fault of the Jews. It’s all so tiresome. Whenever I see protests erupt in Iran, I foolishly get my hopes up that moderate Iranians have had enough and they will finally overthrow their Islamic Republic leaders. And yet it never happens. Too many of them have apparently been conditioned for too long to believe the propaganda put out by the government. In that regard, they’re really not all that different than the people of North Korea. I just hope we don’t wind up having to go to war with either of them just to prove the point.