President Donald Trump said Iran wants to negotiate but warned he may still carry out strikes against the Islamic Republic over a violent crackdown on protests challenging the regime’s rule.
Activists say hundreds of people have been killed by security forces in their bid to quash the unrest, with the country cut off from the world by an internet and phone blackout that has lasted days. The situation was now under control, Iran’s foreign minister said Monday, adding that the country was “ready for war but also for dialogue.”
Trump has repeatedly warned the United States may intervene if authorities open fire on the demonstrations, which first erupted two weeks ago over soaring prices.
Activists and analysts say the true scale of the crackdown was yet to become clear.
One video that circulated online Sunday was geolocated by News Of Losangeles to a forensic medical center just outside the capital, Tehran. It shows dozens of bodies in black bags spread out on the ground in the open air as people walking through the area can be heard wailing and crying.
Amid all this, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One late Sunday that Iran’s leaders called him and “they want to negotiate.” He added that “a meeting is being set up” but that “we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting.”
He said that “the military is looking” at “some very strong options.” And asked about Iran’s threat of retaliation he added, “If they do that, we will hit them at levels that they’ve never been hit before.”
According to three U.S. officials, the president has been presented with preliminary plans ranging from possible strikes to other options that would not entail military action. No final decision has been made, the officials said.
Iranian officials have suggested that they are indeed ready to talk – while still warning against any attack.
The situation was now “under total control,” Iranian foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a briefing to foreign ambassadors in Tehran. He blamed the United States and Israel for the violence, without offering evidence.
“The demonstrations turned violent and bloody to give an excuse to the American president to intervene,” he said, according to the Qatar-owned news network Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf warned Washington against “a miscalculation.”
“Let us be clear: in the case of an attack on Iran, the occupied territories (Israel) as well as all U.S. bases and ships will be our legitimate target,” said Qalibaf, a former commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.
And there are few signs that the crackdown will ease up soon.
“We do truly believe that a massacre has taken place, and the extent and dimensions of it are yet to be known as the country comes out of the internet blockade, if it does,” Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group, told News Of Losangeles in a telephone interview. “They don’t seem in any rush to restore the internet.”
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said Sunday that at least 544 people have been killed, 496 protesters and 48 security forces. Iranian authorities have released no official toll.
More than 10,000 people have been detained, according to HRANA.
The demonstrations, which were sparked by economic grievances as the currency crashed and inflation soared, have now morphed into one of the biggest challenges the Islamic Republic has faced in its 47-year history, as thousands of people have taken to the streets to demand the end of the ruling clergy.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres urged Iranian authorities to use “maximum restraint” in a post on X on Sunday.
“Shocked by reports of violence & excessive use of force by the Iranian authorities against protesters resulting in deaths & injuries in recent days,” he said.
At the morgue in Kahrizak, a town about five miles south of Tehran, the video geolocated by News Of Losangeles shows a TV screen scrolling through pictures of the dead, while the right side of the image shows a death toll of 250 and Friday’s date.
Iranian authorities have planned a counter-demonstration on Monday to rally their supporters but the protests are likely to continue, analysts say.
“I think everything is fluid. It’s very hard to imagine what will happen in the coming days,” said Ghaemi of the Center for Human Rights in Iran.
