Iran on Monday criticized a police crackdown in the United States against university students protesting against the rising death toll from the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

“The American government has practically ignored its human rights obligations and respect for the principles of democracy that they profess,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said.

Tehran “does not at all accept the violent police and military behavior aimed at the academic atmosphere and student demands,” he said.

American universities have been rocked by pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel demonstrations, triggering campus clashes with police and the arrest of some 275 people over the weekend. The protests regularly feature intense anti-Zionist rhetoric, sometimes veering into overt antisemitism, which has led to trepidation among many Jewish and Israeli students.

In Iran, hundreds of people demonstrated in Tehran and other cities on Sunday in solidarity with the US protests.

Some carried banners proclaiming “Death to Israel” and “Gazans are truly oppressed,” state media reported.

“What we have seen in American universities in recent days is an awakening of the world community and world public opinion towards the Palestinian issue,” said Kanaani.

“It is not possible to silence the loud voices of protesters against this crime and genocide through police action and violent policies,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic’s morality police have recently begun cracking down on women not complying with the country’s modesty laws, following the 2022-2023 protests that were sparked by the death of Iranian Mahsa Amini in police custody after she was arrested for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly.

Throughout the massive protests, police responded aggressively against the demonstrators, with arrests and executions still being carried out.

Hundreds were killed and thousands arrested during the protests themselves, according to rights groups and the United Nations.

A UN investigation launched into the protests found that the Islamic Republic’s treatment of protesters “amounts to crimes against humanity — specifically those of murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, persecution, enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts.”

The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s shock October 7 attack, which saw thousands of Hamas-led terrorists storm southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and take 253 hostages, amid rampant sexual violence and other atrocities.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has effected a humanitarian disaster and killed at least 34,488 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. The figure, which cannot be independently verified, includes some 13,000 Hamas gunmen Israel says it has killed in battle. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.