New Delhi [India], January 24 (ANI): Abdul Majid Hakeem Illahi, Representative of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Syed Ali Khamenei, in India, said that these Iranian protesters were educated from abroad and were active on social media.

Ilahi, in an interview with ANI, said that they learnt violence and killed innocent people.

'Actually, there are Iranian citizens. They learn it, and theyare educated. They are educated in abroad or even in Iran and they were educated also through social media. How they kill innocent people, how they burn hospital, how they burn mosque, how they burn library. These have come from they learned it and they educated they were educated through social media,' he said.

Ilahi said that social media is not under government control, so it is difficult to control the anti-Iran narrative.

'Social media is not in any country or on the 100% under control of the government. It's very difficult and Iran has different situation because the enemies of Iran are a lot more than 250 channels 24/7 hours propagating against Iran and they want to teach Iranian youth and make them against the government,' he said.

'Do you know majority of the people they were getting their lessons from abroad from some group in out of Iran- enemies of Iran,' he said.

Ilahi added that Iran cut the internet off because they wanted peace.

'Iran decided to cut off the internet, international internet because we wanted to bring the peace in the society. We have local internet and it's working,' he added.

Ilahi said that there is a deep divide between the reality on ground in Iran and the projected reality on social media.

'Concerning the situation in Iran? Actually we have two things which we have to divide and between them. The first one is the fact and the reality of the situation and the second one is imagination which made by narration of the journalist or by the enemies or by some other people. Actually there is very deep gap between these two realities. The one is fact, reality and the second one is imagination and analysis exists about the situation in Iran,' he said.

Meanwhile, Iranian state television has released the first official death toll from the recent anti-government protests that engulfed the country, reporting that 3,117 people were killed during the crackdown, as reported by Al Jazeera. (ANI)