Hundreds of protesters have been killed in Iran, human rights groups say, while videos showing security forces trying to violently suppress the demonstrations circulate, despite an internet blackout imposed by the Iranian regime facing a national challenge to its decades-long rule.
While the White House assesses whether to respond to the crackdown on this popular revolt against the Iranian clerical establishment, long hostile to the US, President Trump threatened “strong” military action against Iran if more protesters are killed, and said aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening that a meeting “is being scheduled” with Iranian authorities.
“Iran wants to negotiate, yes. We can meet with them”, he said. “But we might have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting.”
Iran, which has threatened to attack Israel and American bases and ships in the region if the US takes military action against it, indicated it would be open to negotiations. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said on Monday that a channel remains open with the United States. “Through this channel, the necessary messages are exchanged”, he stated.
Officials will brief Trump on Tuesday on options for intervention, according to the Wall Street Journal. These options could include everything from military strikes to the use of secret cyber weapons, sanctions, or aid to meet the protesters’ needs.
The death toll rises
The Human Rights Activists in Iran group, or HRA, based in the United States but with extensive networks in Iran, has documented 495 deaths among protesters, with over 500 other cases under review. Some Iranian security force members have also been killed. The HRA says more than 10,600 people have been arrested in these 15 days of protests.
“We are seeing horrific images”, Skylar Thompson, HRA deputy director, told NPR, adding that security forces are using “military-grade weapons” to disperse crowds.
Protests that began with the collapse of the country’s currency in an economy already strained by international sanctions have spread and grown into demands for the end of Iran’s theocracy. The HRA says it has documented about 580 protests in more than 185 cities over the last two weeks.
The regime responded by cutting the country’s internet and phone networks last Thursday. Despite the blackout, some videos of the demonstrations reached the rest of the world, likely using Starlink satellite transmitters. They show massive crowds of protesters and, with rising anger, chants of “death to the dictator”, referring to the country’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
On Monday, in response to the protests, Iranian leaders gathered large crowds of pro-government demonstrators in the streets. Iranian state television showed images of protesters filling Tehran heading toward Enghelab Square, or “Square of the Islamic Revolution”, in the capital. It called the rally “Iranian revolt against American-Zionist terrorism”.
State broadcasters framed the anti-government protests as actions fomented by the US and Israel and said that “armed rioters” were being arrested. On Saturday, Iran’s attorney general warned that anyone participating would be considered an “enemy of God”, a sentence that carries the death penalty. The Iranian army said it was ready to “firmly defend national interests”.
Geolocated images at a morgue in Kahrizak, south of the Iranian capital, highlighted by several human rights groups, show bodies wrapped in black body bags on the ground outside, while grieving relatives search for loved ones. A healthcare worker at a hospital in Tehran told BBC Persian that protesters were arriving with bullet wounds to the head and chest.
Trump told Fox News last week that he had “put Iran on notice” and that if the regime shoots protesters, the US will hit Iran “very hard”. “I said it loud and clear, that’s what we’re going to do”, he stated. On Sunday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that with its violent response to protesters, Iranian leaders were “starting to” cross the threshold that could trigger a US response.
Economic crisis
Iranian experts say the country’s regime is at its weakest point since the creation of the Islamic Republic in 1979. The collapsed economy makes life unsustainable for many Iranians. “There are people who can’t buy dairy, meat, or, you know, even beans”, Golnaz Esfandiari, executive editor of Radio Free Europe’s Persian-language service, told NPR. “Moreover, people are fed up with nearly 50 years of repression, mismanagement, and corruption.”
Iran has recently lost geopolitical status, as proxy militias it has long used as a buffer zone and to project influence are under attack. Israel’s war in Gaza has dramatically reduced Hamas’s power. And the collapse of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria just over a year ago cut vital supply lines to the Iran-backed Lebanese militia, Hezbollah.
“Syria was a lifeline for Hezbollah”, said Lina Khatib, visiting fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. “Syria was the place through which Hezbollah received much of its finances and weapons from Iran.”
Khatib says the Iranian regime “has persistently for decades asked the Iranian people to sacrifice, including economically, for the survival of the Islamic Republic” while pouring countless sums of money into those proxies. But the weakening of those militias, combined with Israeli and American strikes on targets inside Iran in June last year, “has left people feeling they sacrificed for nothing”.
Outside Iran, Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the country’s last shah and a prominent voice in the fragmented opposition, encouraged Iranians to continue their demonstrations. “Don’t abandon the streets. My heart is with you”, he said in a recorded address. “I know that soon I will be by your side.” Although some videos have emerged showing protesters calling for Pahlavi to take power, it is unclear how widespread that support is.
For now, experts say expectations that the regime might collapse may be premature. Although the protests have seen Iranians from many demographics express their grievances, there are no signs yet of defections or dissent in the security apparatus that holds the country’s theocracy together.
Source: npr.org by Ruth Sherlock