( CNN ) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wednesday urged Middle East leaders to listen to the voices of citizens who have taken to the streets in masses to demand a change in government -- though such protests in his own country have been crushed with brute force . Ahmadinejad `` strongly recommended such leaders to let their peoples express their opinions , '' the Islamic Republic News Agency reported . `` He further urged those leaders of regional countries who respond to the demands of their nations and their revolutionary uprisings with hot bullets to join their peoples ' movements instead of creating blood baths . '' Anti-government protests that toppled the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt have spread across a swath of the Middle East and North Africa , including in Iran . There , opposition to the ruling clerics has simmered since the 2009 election , when hundreds of thousands of people filled Tehran 's streets to denounce the re-election of Ahmadinejad as fraudulent . The demonstrators have been met with force in major Iranian cities . Security forces have opened fire in some cases and arrested hundreds of protesters in others . Opposition leaders are regularly detained and their homes and offices raided . Hard-line members of the Iranian parliament have demanded the execution of opposition leaders and former presidential candidates Mehdi Karrubi and Mir Hossein Moussavi . But Ahmadinejad , in his remarks , altogether sidestepped the simmering unrest at home . Instead , he held up Libya , saying the world was `` bewildered '' by the actions of the President Moammar Gadhafi . `` The president said it was a wonder that the ruler of a country could kill his own people using guns and tanks , and even stress that he would kill anybody who utters a word against him , '' the news agency said . Reporting from Iran has been difficult in recent weeks -- foreign journalists were denied visas , accredited journalists living in the country were restricted from covering the demonstrations and internet speed slowed to a crawl in an apparent attempt to both limit protest organizing and restrict information from being transmitted out of the country .
He urges the leaders to refrain from ' ` ` public baths '' Ahmadinejad sidesteps the civil unrest at home . In Iran , security forces have responded with deadly force to demonstrations .