WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he has been told that killings in Iran’s crackdown on nationwide protests were subsiding and that he believes there is currently no plan for large-scale executions, even as tensions between Tehran and Washington remain high.
Asked who told him that the killings stopped, Trump described them as “very important sources on the other side.”
The president did not rule out potential U.S. military action, saying “we are going to watch what the process is” before noting the U.S. administration received a “very good statement” from Iran.
Trump’s comments appeared meant to signal a cautious easing of fears that the crisis in Iran could escalate into a broader regional confrontation. In a televised interview on Monday, Trump had warned that the United States would take “very strong action” if Iran’s authorities went ahead with executing protesters they had detained during widespread unrest.
Reuters reported that Donald Trump appears to have decided on a military strike against Iran. Two European officials told the news agency that US military intervention appeared likely, with one saying it could take place within the next day. An Israeli official also said it appeared Trump had decided to intervene, although the scope and timing of any strike had yet to be made clear.
Earlier, Iran warned the United States that it was capable of responding to any attack, as Washington and UK appeared to be pulling personnel out of a base that Iran targeted in a strike last year. The tensions between the two foes come after President Donald Trump warned Tehran it could face action over a crackdown on protests that a rights group said had left at least 3,428 people dead.
In another development, the British embassy in Tehran has been temporarily closed. Politico cited a government spokesperson saying: “We have temporarily closed the British Embassy in Tehran, this will now operate remotely. Foreign Office travel advice has now been updated to reflect this consular change.”
Earlier, Poland joined the growing list of countries urging its citizens to leave Iran immediately alongside Italy. The United States has also issued multiple alerts in recent days urging American citizens – including dual nationals – to leave Iran, suggesting land routes to Turkey or Armenia as international flights face cancellations. Several countries, including the UK, Germany, France and others, have issued similar directives to their citizens.
Trump has said he had been told that killings in Iran’s crackdown on nationwide protests were subsiding and that he believed there was currently no plan for large-scale executions. On Tuesday the US president had said in a CBS News interview that the United States would act if Iran began hanging protesters. “We will take very strong action if they do such a thing,” he said. “When they start killing thousands of people -- and now you’re telling me about hanging. We’ll see how that’s going to work out for them,” Trump said. Earlier, Erfan Soltani, who was reportedly facing imminent execution after he was arrested last week, was not executed today, a family member told media. Soltani was tried, convicted and sentenced after his arrest in Karaj on Thursday at the peak of the protests before the internet blackout. He is one of the many thousands of protesters that have been arrested.
At the same time, some personnel were asked to depart the Al Udeid US military base in Qatar, two diplomatic sources told AFP on Wednesday, with the Gulf state saying “regional tensions” were behind the move. In June, Iran targeted the Al Udeid base in response to American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. The US and UK have evacuated some personnel from a military base in Qatar as Washington mulls launching military action against Iran, which Tehran has warned would trigger retaliatory strikes. The US embassy in Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, told its personnel on Wednesday to act with caution and avoid military installations.
Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said on a visit to a prison holding protest detainees that “if a person burned someone, beheaded someone and set them on fire then we must do our work quickly”, in comments broadcast by state television. Iranian news agencies also quoted him as saying the trials should be held in public and said he had spent five hours in a prison in Tehran to examine the cases. Footage broadcast by state media showed the judiciary chief seated before an Iranian flag in a large, ornate room in the prison, interrogating a prisoner himself. The detainee, dressed in grey clothing and his face blurred, is accused of taking Molotov cocktails to a park in Tehran. At Wednesday’s funeral ceremony in Tehran, thousands of people waved flags of the Islamic republic as prayers were read out for the dead outside Tehran University, according to images broadcast on state television. “Death to America!” read banners held up by people attending the rally, while others carried photos of Khamenei. High-ranking Iranian official told journalists on Wednesday that there had been no new “riots” since Monday, drawing a distinction between previous cost-of-living protests and the more recent demonstrations. “Every society can expect protests, but we will not tolerate violence,” he said. Iranian prosecutors have said authorities would press capital charges of “waging war against God” against some detainees.
According to state media, hundreds of people have been arrested. The state media has also reported on the arrest of a foreign national for espionage in connection with the protests.
Iranian security forces have killed at least 3,428 protesters in their crackdown, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) NGO said Wednesday, adding that more than 10,000 people had also been arrested. The group’s director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam condemned the “mass killing of protesters on the streets in recent days”, while IHR warned that the new figure represented an “absolute minimum” for the actual toll. Asked about the number of deaths, another government official said Wednesday that “we do not have any number yet”, adding victims were still being identified.
In a related development, Monitor Netblocks said in a post to X on Wednesday that the internet blackout had now lasted 132 hours. Some information has trickled out of Iran, however. New videos on social media, with locations verified by AFP, showed bodies lined up in the Kahrizak morgue just south of the Iranian capital, with the corpses wrapped in black bags and distraught relatives searching for loved ones.
In the face of the crackdown and communications blackout, evidence of protest activity has sharply diminished. The US-based Institute for the Study of War said the authorities were using an “unprecedented level of brutality to suppress protests” and noted that reports of protest activity on Tuesday were at a “relatively low level”.
The G7 foreign ministers issued a new statement on the situation in Iran, stressing that they are “gravely concerned by the developments surrounding the ongoing protests”. The ministers urge the Iranian authorities to “exercise full restraint, to refrain from violence and to uphold the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Iran’s citizens”.
