In an explicit reference to the Iranian regime’s continued crackdown, Iran’s top Sunni cleric Mowlavi Abdolhamid warned no government will be able to ensure its survival by use of force.

“Governments cannot be maintained by weapons…All the systems in the world need the support of the people to survive,” said the top religious leader of Iran’s largely Sunni Baluch (Baloch) population in his Friday prayer sermons in Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchestan.

His remarks come against the backdrop of Tehran’s severe crackdown on dissidents and protesters, including ethnic and religious minorities. Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRA) reported that 324 people were arrested in 2023 over their ethnic activism, 19 of whom were given 984 months of imprisonment by Iran's judiciary.

In his sermon, Abdolhamid also discussed Iran’s worsening economic crisis, further adding that conditions will not improve if there is no political stability in the country.

“The economy has been hit so hard that we sleep at night and we wake up in the morning only to find that the value of the national currency has dropped,” he pointed out.

In more than a decade, the country's economic growth has averaged zero. The situation has been further exacerbated since the US withdrawal from the JCPOA nuclear deal in 2018. Over the past six years, the rial, Iran’s national currency, has fallen 15-fold, fueling inflation and plunging millions of citizens into poverty.

As on previous Fridays, Iran’s security forces patrolled around the Makki Jameh Mosque of Zahedan, where Abdolhamid delivers his critical sermons on a weekly basis, reports from Zahedan said.