Albania's prime minister blames Iran for protests against the Kushner family's takeover of the islands "I know it's easy to mock the participation of foreign actors, but the participation of foreign actors in the protests from June until now is real," Prime Minister Edi Rama said at a press conference on Thursday. Albania is embroiled in a "hybrid war," Rama said. "I never said that Iran organized the demonstrations, but I said that the hands of the criminal regime in Tehran are on the boulevard, and there is evidence of that," he said. Rama, who has faced almost five months of protests against the government and corruption involving crowds of up to 250,000 people (the Balkan country has a population of only about 2.7 million), remains adamant that he will not be forced to resign on the "street". The protests in Albania began in June and were sparked by a project to build a luxury resort and villas on the island of Sazan and in the protected area of Visa Narta in southern Albania, linked to Jared Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump. The so-called "Flamingo Revolution", named after the flamingos that live in local wetlands, protests against environmental destruction, brutal privatization practices, corruption and lack of transparency. Some observers fear that the project may actually be a remote island retreat for the elite in the event of the end of the world, or a secret strategic point controlling access to the Adriatic Sea. Rama and his allies almost immediately began accusing Iran of involvement in the protests. Tehran has denied these "ridiculous" claims. And the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Email Bagai, joked that "they might say that the flamingos were probably Iranian security agents." Iran has had its own "interference" claims against Albania for over a decade.