Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei has contradicted himself by saying that the demands of protesters in Iraq and Lebanon are rightful while accusing the US and its allies of being behind the unrest.
The Americans and Western intelligence services "backed by the money" of some countries in the region "are causing turmoil... to destroy security", said Khamenei on Wednesday.
"The people of Iraq and Lebanon have some demands that are rightful, but they should know these demands can only be realised within the legal frameworks," he said in remarks aired on state television.
"The enemy wants to disrupt the legal framework. When in a country there is no legal framework and a vacuum is created, no positive action can be taken," he was quoted by his official website as telling graduating army cadets.
In an apparent warning, Khamenei praised Iran's crackdown against street protests at home that started in December 2017 and lasted till mid January 2018.
At the time, he said Iran’s foreign enemies were seeking to overthrow the country’s regime.
The editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan, believed to reflect Khamenei’s views, on Wednesday renewed his call on Iran-backed militias mainly Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) to storm the US and Saudi embassies in Baghdad.
He said the two missions were responsible for the recent turmoil in Iraq.
Earlier this month, the newspaper urged in an article the PMF to close “the house of spying,” in reference to measures needed to be taken similar to the storming of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, which cut diplomatic relations between the US and Iran.
