TEHRAN — Iran’s minister of interior said on Thursday that some rioters in Iran were trained abroad and were given money.

“Money was regularly deposited for one of them, and every 10-15 minutes about 25 to 30 million tomans was deposited into this person's account. Some were even given 500,000 Tomans for each Molotov cocktail they made,” Ahmad Vahidi stated. 

Speaking in a gathering of university professors in Azad University of Tehran, Vahidi pointed to the role of the opposition media in the recent riots and stressed that it is noteworthy that those who criticized Iran for supporting Gaza and Lebanon are now aligning their work with the Persian-language network affiliated to Saudi Arabia, a country that beheaded 82 people in one day.
 
“In any case, it remains to be seen what happens when some people act on the orders of a network affiliated with Saudi Arabia. This is the important issue. We have to see what the enemy is doing and what we have to do,” the interior minister stated.

Referring to the media war by the West to harm the Islamic Revolution and the people, Vahidi said just 1,504 articles were published in the United States about the unrest in Iran within a week. 

Similarly, he noted, 720 articles were published within 9 days in the United Kingdom and 830 in Germany.

The number of articles published in France regarding the unrest in Iran were 655, in Spain 207, and in Italy 497, he added.  

“It was also announced on Tuesday that 240 million tweets were made about death of Mahsa Amini, and this was due to the use of several thousand users using Twitter bots,” the interior minister concluded.