Iran slams Zionist dictators for handling protests with 'iron fist'

“For many years, the occupying and criminal Zionists tried to portray their fake regime as the most democratic entity in West Asia,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani said in a post on his Twitter account on Friday.

He said the Zionist dictators are now handling the upheaval with an “iron fist.”

The protest leaders have warned Netanyahu that Israel is on the edge of a precipice, the Iranian spokesman said.

Over the past weeks, Israel has been the scene of thousands-strong anti-regime protests in Tel Aviv and elsewhere. The principal grievance is Netanyahu’s unpopular judicial overhaul plan.

The plan seeks to scrap a number of the supreme court’s powers to make it incapable of overriding the decisions made by the far-right cabinet. It also seeks to give sweeping powers to the political elite in the process of selecting judges for the court.

Netanyahu was made to put the plan on hold in March to enable negotiations on the issue. However, deeming talks to be pointless, the prime minister re-launched his bid to push through with the reform package in June, claiming that he has come up with new ‘moderate’ proposals.

President Isaac Herzog warned in March that the judicial overhaul plan could lead to “civil war.”

“Those who think that a real civil war, with lives lost, is a line we will not cross, have no idea…The abyss is at our fingertips.”