IRAN - May 28 - Tehran Says Outsiders Behind Ethnic Unrest.

Tehran's Supreme Leader Ayat Ali Khamenei blames the "enemy", a term usually used to refer to the US and Israel, for fomenting ethnic tensions in the country. An Iranian newspaper has enraged the country's Azeri minority with a cartoon that seemed to ridicule them, sparking protests in at least two cities where many Azeris live. "Creating such tensions and instigating ethnic sentiments ... is the last arrow in the enemy's quiver against the Iranian nation and the Islamic Republic", Khamenei said in comments broadcast on state television. "The enemy will fail and there is no doubt about it", said Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters. Around 200 Azeris gathered in Tehran near the parliament and called for teaching the Turkish language in their schools, Iran's student news agency ISNA said. Police dispersed them before they reached parliament, it said. It was the latest in a series of protests sparked by the cartoon published in the state's official Iran newspaper, which the judiciary has since banned for stirring up ethnic rifts and jailed the cartoonist and the editor-in-chief. Azeris, majority of whom are from northwest of Iran, speak a language closely related to Turkish and make up about 25% of the population in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Although Azeris have many luminaries among Iran's commercial elite, Iran's majority Persians often depict them as slow-witted in their jokes. Khamenei praised Iran's Azeri minority for loyalty to the Islamic Republic and the 1979 Islamic revolution. "It proves the stupidity of the enemy that he goes to the people of Azerbaijan. They will respond to their enemies", Khamenei said in a speech to Iranian lawmakers, who chanted back: Azerbaijan is awake and supports the revolution". "Creating such tensions and instigating ethnic sentiments ... is the last arrow in the enemy's quiver against the Iranian nation and the Islamic Republic".