Parisa Hafezi
Jan 18 (Reuters) – Iran’s president warned on Sunday that any U.S. attack would trigger a “harsh response” from Tehran after an Iranian official in the region said at least 5,000 people – including about 500 security personnel – had been killed in protests across the country.
Iran’s protests last month sparked by economic discontent in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar quickly turned political and spread across the country, drawing participants from different generations and income groups – shopkeepers, students, men and women, poor and rich – calling for an end to clerical rule.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene if protesters continue to be killed or executed in the streets. “It’s time to find new leadership in Iran,” he told Politico on Saturday.
Iran said on Sunday it may continue executing people detained during the unrest, and its religious rulers, facing growing international pressure over the bloodiest unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, are trying to prevent Trump from intervening.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned on the
Human rights groups report 24,000 arrests
Protests declined last week after a violent crackdown.
The death toll has reached 3,308, with another 4,382 cases under review, the US human rights group HRANA said on Saturday. More than 24,000 arrests are said to have been confirmed.
Trump thanked Tehran’s leaders in a social media post on Friday, saying they had canceled plans to execute 800 people. He has moved U.S. military assets to the region but has not specified what he might do.
A day later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Trump a “criminal” and acknowledged “thousands of deaths” that he blamed on “terrorists and rioters” linked to the United States and Israel.
Iran’s judiciary has indicated that executions may continue.
“A series of acts have been identified as mohareb, which is one of the most severe Islamic punishments,” Asghar Jahangir, spokesman for Iran’s judiciary, told a news conference on Sunday.
Mohareb is an Islamic legal term meaning waging war against God and is punishable by death under Iranian law.
Iranian officials told Reuters the verified death toll was unlikely to “increase significantly”, adding that “Israeli and foreign armed groups” had provided support and equipment to those taking to the streets.
Religious institutions often blame the unrest on foreign enemies, including the United States and Israel, a long-time enemy of the Islamic Republic, which launched a military strike in June.
The network outage was partially lifted on Saturday and lasted for several hours, but internet monitoring group NetBlocks said it had since been restored.
A resident of Tehran said he witnessed riot police firing directly at a group of mostly young men and women last week. Videos circulating on social media, some of which were confirmed by Reuters, showed security forces cracking down on demonstrations across the country.
Kurdish region has highest death toll
The Iranian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, also said some of the worst clashes and highest death tolls have occurred in Iran’s Kurdish region in the northwest of the country.
Kurdish separatists are active there and the conflict was one of the most violent episodes of the past tumultuous period.
Three sources told Reuters on January 14 that armed Kurdish separatist groups were trying to cross the border from Iraq into Iran, suggesting that foreign entities may be trying to take advantage of the instability.
Faizan Ali, a 40-year-old doctor from Lahore, said he had to cut short a trip to Iran to visit his Iranian wife in the central city of Isfahan because there was “no internet or communication with his family in Pakistan.”
“I saw a violent mob burning down buildings, banks and cars. I also witnessed a man stabbing a passerby,” he told Reuters after returning to Lahore.
(Additional reporting by Mubasher Bukhari in Lahore; writing by Parisa Hafezi; editing by Alexander Smith and Philippa Fletcher)