Iran protests appear to slow under weight of brutal crackdown | Iran
Iran’s nationwide protest movement appeared to slow on Thursday under the weight of a brutal crackdown by authorities that has left thousands dead and tens of thousands jailed.
In Tehran, Iranians reported that the streets were relatively calm as gunfire had subsided and fires had been extinguished; This was in marked contrast to the situation weeks earlier, when large crowds confronted security forces.
The slowdown in protests comes just two days after Donald Trump called on Iranians to “keep protesting, take over your institutions” and promised “help is on the way.” Intelligence assessments indicated that the United States was preparing to attack Iran; This was a move Trump threatened if the Iranian government killed protesters.
But on Wednesday night, Trump appeared to back off the brink of military intervention, telling reporters that Iranian authorities had halted executions.
“We’re told the killings in Iran have stopped – they’ve stopped – they’ve stopped. And there’s no execution, no execution, no plan for execution – so they told me that from a reliable source,” Trump said.
The White House later claimed that 800 planned executions in Iran had been halted. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump and his team warned there would be “serious consequences” if the killings continued. “The President understands today that 800 executions that were planned and expected to take place yesterday have been stopped,” he said.
But he said Trump continues to monitor the situation closely. “All options are on the table for the president,” Leavitt said.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz echoed those sentiments at a U.N. Security Council meeting Thursday night, saying the United States stood with the “brave people of Iran” and that Trump “made clear that all options are on the table to stop the massacre.”
Hossein Darzi, Iran’s deputy ambassador to the UN, condemned the US for “playing a direct role in provoking unrest in Iran into violence”.
Darzi said, “While the United States is trying to present itself as a friend of the Iranian people with the empty excuse of concerns for the Iranian people and claims to support human rights, it is also preparing the ground for political instability and military intervention with a so-called ‘humanitarian’ discourse.”
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused the US of organizing the meeting to “justify blatant attack and interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.” Russia defended the actions of Iran, the only member of the council to do so.
France’s ambassador to the UN, Jérôme Bonnafont, called for the immediate release of those arbitrarily detained and the postponement of the death penalty, while the UK’s deputy ambassador, Archibald Young, said: in question “Iran must urgently change course” and respect the fundamental rights of Iranians “including the right to protest without fear of violence or repression.”
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, at least 2,637 people died in the protests.
Among them was an Iranian Red Crescent worker who the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said was killed in northern Iran on Saturday. Five more Red Crescent workers were injured, prompting the organization to call for the protection of humanitarian workers.
Trump is understood to be considering all options for attacking Iran but remains unconvinced that any action would lead to decisive change.
Trump has engaged in misleading behavior towards Iran in the past. In June, he suggested that U.S. officials had fully begun negotiations with their Iranian counterparts over its nuclear program, when in fact they were preparing for attacks on the 12-day war last summer.
Iranian officials also toned down their rhetoric on Wednesday after a week of threatening retaliatory attacks on the United States, and foreign minister Abbas Araghchi called on the United States to begin negotiations. Araghchi added that authorities had no plans to hang people, Iranian state media reported on Thursday.
Iranian state media claimed that 26-year-old Erfan Sultani, the first protester to be sentenced to death, will not be executed. Sultani was scheduled to be executed on Wednesday and had become a worldwide symbol of the crackdown on protesters in Iran.
Despite Trump’s statements that the killings would stop, Iranian authorities continued to pursue protesters. While Iranian media announced the arrest of protesters whom they described as “terrorists”, the internet blackout entered its seventh day; leaving behind communication blackouts during previous protest movements.
Authorities reportedly searched for Starlink satellite dishes, attacking one of the only ways to communicate with the outside world by publishing shipping photos of the devices they say they seized.
State media showed strict judge Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei personally questioning detainees, while rights groups raised concerns about forced confessions among arrested protesters. Ejei, who is sanctioned by the US and the EU, is accused by opposition groups of involvement in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988.
In the footage released on Thursday, Ejei is seen interrogating the women; One of the women is accused of sending a message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Another woman, accused of throwing concrete blocks at security forces, said as Ejei questioned her: “I don’t know what happened, why I did such a stupid thing.”
From the beginning, state media published footage of such confessions as authorities sought to portray the protests as a foreign-instigated movement aimed at destabilizing Iran.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights group said: “Confessions extracted under duress and torture prior to legal proceedings violate the defendants’ right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
The protests began on December 28, following a sudden drop in the value of the country’s currency, and quickly expanded to demands for political reform and even the end of the Iranian regime. The protest movement spread to all 31 provinces. This is the most serious crisis of unrest the government has faced in decades.
Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday that the government was trying to improve living conditions in the country and solve the problems that led to the protests. He has vowed to target corruption and price gouging, which he hopes will increase Iranians’ purchasing power.
Iran’s national currency has lost two-thirds of its value in the last three years, while prices of basic goods have risen and food prices have increased by 72% since last year.
Analysts said the protests point to fundamental systemic problems in Iran that will create problems for the Iranian regime in the long term, but that the collapse of the state is unlikely. According to NBC, Israeli and Arab officials also expressed concern in recent days, telling the US administration that the Iranian regime is not weak enough to be overthrown by American attacks. It was reported on Tuesday.
Trump has been heavily lobbied by leaders in the Middle East not to continue with the attacks, which are sure to lead to Iranian counter-attacks on US bases in the region.
Some Iranians on social media expressed disappointment with Trump’s backtracking on military intervention. An AI photo of Trump removing his mask to reveal former US president Barack Obama, whom the Iranian diaspora portrayed as soft on Iran, was widely shared.
G7 foreign ministers said they were “ready to impose additional restrictive measures” against Iran over its handling of the protests and its “deliberate use of violence, killings of protesters, arbitrary detention and intimidation tactics”.
