Donald Trump has said Iran has initiated contact to suggest talks, while he weighs “very strong” military options against the government following a clampdown on demonstrators that has left hundreds dead.
When asked on Sunday by reporters aboard Air Force One if Iran had crossed his previously stated red line of protesters being killed, Trump said “they’re starting to, it looks like.”
“We’re looking at it very seriously,” the US president said, according to a report by The Guardian. “The military is looking at it, and we’re looking at some very strong options. We’ll make a determination.”
Trump says Iran has crossed red line as protest deaths mount
Amid rising tensions, and against a backdrop of the US plucking Nicolás Maduro out of Venezuela, Trump claimed Iran had proposed negotiations. “I think they’re tired of being beat up by the United States,” he said. “Iran wants to negotiate.”
According to the report, at least 538 people have been killed in the violence surrounding demonstrations, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, including 490 protesters. The group reported more than 10,600 people were arrested by Iranian authorities.
The crackdown has raised the likelihood of US intervention, with Trump saying he would “rescue” protesters if the Iranian government killed them. He reiterated his threat to intervene on Saturday night. “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!” he said on Truth Social.
In response, the Iranian parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, warned Washington against “a miscalculation”, saying that Israel and US interests in the Middle East would be “legitimate targets,” the report said.
“Let us be clear: in the case of an attack on Iran, the occupied territories as well as all US bases and ships will be our legitimate target,” said Qalibaf, a former commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.
Trump is reportedly weighing a range of options including military strikes, secret cyber weapons, widening sanctions and providing online help to anti-government sources.
Meanwhile, Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of Iran’s ousted shah, on Sunday urged Iranian security forces and government employees to join the swelling protest movement.
Iran proposes negotiations as Trump weighs military strikes over protester deaths
“Employees of state institutions, as well as members of the armed and security forces, have a choice: stand with the people and become allies of the nation, or choose complicity with the murderers of the people,” Pahlavi posted on social media.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, accused arch-foes of Iran of “trying to escalate this unrest” and bringing “terrorists from abroad into the country”, in an interview broadcast on Sunday by state media.
Pezeshkian urged people to join a “national resistance march” on Monday to denounce the violence, state television reported.
The protest movement in Iran is the most significant unrest the country has experienced in years. Though triggered initially by a sudden slide in the country’s currency, protesters soon demanded political reform and called for the downfall of the government.
Iranian authorities had arrested key members of the protest movement, the national police chief said on Sunday. “Last night, significant arrests were made of the main elements in the riots, who, God willing, will be punished after going through legal procedures,” the police chief, Ahmad-Reza Radan, told state TV, without specifying the number of those arrested.
Iran’s attorney general had said earlier that those who were caught protesting, or even helping protesters, could be charged with being “an enemy of God” – which is punished with the death penalty.
