A police motorcycle burns during a protest over the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who died after being arrested by the Islamic republic’s “morality police”, in Tehran, Iran September 19, 2022. WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Iran on Thursday accused its-arch enemy Israel and Western intelligence services of plotting to start a civil war in the Islamic Republic, now gripped by some of the biggest anti-government protests since the 1979 revolution.

“Various security services, Israel and some Western politicians who have made plans for civil war, destruction and the disintegration of Iran should know that Iran is not Libya or Sudan,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian tweeted.

Tehran accuses Western adversaries of stoking nationwide unrest, which has been joined by Iranians from all walks of life since the Sept. 16 death of young Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini. She died while in custody after morality police arrested her for allegedly flouting the Islamic dress code.

Iran was hit by a spate of attacks on Wednesday.

Seven people were killed in the southwestern city of Izeh in what state media described as a “terrorist attack”.

In separate violence, gunmen riding a motorcycle shot several members of the security forces in the central city of Isfahan, killing two people and injuring eight, according to state television.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which state TV blamed on “rioters”.

Amini’s death and the protests that followed have drawn international condemnation of Iran‘s clerical leadership, which has struggled to suppress the unrest and blamed foreign enemies and their alleged local agents.

Five people detained during protests have been sentenced to death, according to the judiciary’s Mizan news agency.

Amnesty International, in a Twitter post, said Iranian authorities were seeking the death penalty for at least 21 people “in sham trials designed to intimidate those participating in the popular uprising that’s rocked Iran since September & deter others from joining the movement”.