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Donald Trump has threatened to “take very strong action” if Iranian authorities begin executing anti-government protesters this week, as the reported death toll from the crisis surged past 2,500.
“If they do such a thing, we will take very strong action,” Trump told CBS News in an interview broadcast on Tuesday night, hours before the US president was due to be briefed on the scale of casualties inside Iran.
There are fears that one of the many thousands of protesters arrested last week, Erfan Soltani, is facing imminent execution after being tried, convicted and sentenced since his arrest on Thursday last week.
The 26-year-old was arrested in Karaj, a city just on the north-west outskirts of Tehran, at the peak of the protests before the internet blackout.
Amnesty International has highlighted his case, warning of concerns that Iranian authorities might “once again resort to swift trials and arbitrary executions to crush and deter dissent”. Last year, Iran hanged at least 1,500 people, Norway-based Iran Human Rights group said.
Trump told CBS he was aware a “pretty substantial number” of people had been killed over the more than two weeks of demonstrations.
The number of dead climbed to at least 2,571 early on Wednesday, as reported by the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). That figure, which includes 12 children, dwarfs the death toll from any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the chaos surrounding the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. More than 18,100 people have been detained, the group said.
Iranian state television has offered the first official acknowledgment of the deaths, quoting an official saying the country had “a lot of martyrs”.
On Tuesday evening, the state department warned US citizens to leave Iran immediately, and various western countries issued similar travel warnings.
In his CBS interview, Trump was asked about the hangings reportedly set to begin in Iran on Wednesday and what he meant by “we will take very strong action”. The president referenced the recent US strikes on Venezuela and the 2019 killing of then Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, before issuing a warning to the regime.
“We don’t want to see what’s happening in Iran happen … When they start killing thousands of people. And now you’re telling me about hanging. We’ll see how that works out for them. It’s not going to work out good,” he said.
Earlier, Trump had posted a message of support to protesters on Truth Social.
“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” he wrote. “Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
In response, Iran’s UN mission vowed Washington’s “playbook” would “fail again”.
“US fantasies and policy toward Iran are rooted in regime change, with sanctions, threats, engineered unrest, and chaos serving as the modus operandi to manufacture a pretext for military intervention,” the statement posted on X said.
A Russian foreign ministry spokesperson characterised US pressure on Iran by saying that “external forces hostile to Iran are trying to use the growing public tension to destabilise and destroy the Iranian state”.
Iranian authorities have insisted they had regained control of the country after successive nights of mass protests nationwide since Thursday.
For the first time in days, Iranians were on Tuesday able to make phone calls abroad after authorities severed communications during the crackdown.
Security service personnel have apparently been searching for Starlink satellite internet terminals, as people in northern Tehran reported authorities raiding apartment buildings with satellite dishes.
While satellite television dishes are illegal, many in the capital have them in homes, and officials broadly had given up on enforcing the law in recent years. Activists said on Wednesday that Starlink was offering free service in Iran.
Meanwhile, Iranian state media has aired at least 97 confessions from protesters since 28 December, according to HRANA. The group said testimony it has collected from those released shows these confessions are coerced, often after torture. The group says such coerced confessions can lead to severe consequences, including state executions.
Witnesses, who have spoken to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said police were present at major intersections, and security officials in plain clothes were visible in public spaces.
Anti-riot police officers wore helmets and body armour while carrying batons, shields, shotguns and teargas launchers, they said.
With Associated Press and Reuters
