President Donald Trump said an escalation in the deadly crackdown on protests in Iran meant Washington might need to take action despite the regime reaching out for negotiations. Photo by Aaron Schwartz/UPI | License Photo
U.S. President Trump said the Iranian leadership had made contact in order to initiate negotiations but warned that the violence the regime was unleashing on its own people might require the United States to take “action” before any talks take place.
“The leaders of Iran called, they want to negotiate. I think they’re tired of being beat up by the United States. We may meet with them, I mean a meeting is being set up. But we may have to act, because of what’s happening, before the meeting,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday night.
Speaking after it emerged Iranian security forces had killed as many as 500 protesters, most of them since Thursday, Trump said Iran’s “leaders” were violent people who just ruled through violence and that his administration, including the U.S. military, was looking at the situation very seriously and considering “some very strong options.”
“I’m getting an hourly report and we’re to make a determination,” he added, but declined to give details of what form any action might take.
U.S. media earlier Sunday reported that Trump was weighing intervention options he had been briefed on, some of which included military strikes on Iranian security and military sites.
Trump also rejected claims by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who accuses the United States of fomenting the unrest, that protesters were troublemakers who were trying to please him, saying they just wanted peace.
“The protesters are after freedom. Iran has not allowed freedom for a long time. I don’t think they’re trying to appease me. They’re trying to get somebody to help them. They’re under siege. And now it looks like they’re being shot,” he said.
Regarding an Internet blackout in place since Thursday, cutting Iranians off from information, each other and the outside world, Trump said ways to get the Internet back up were under discussion and that he planned to call Elon Musk after the briefing to get his input, including possibly making his Starlink satellite communications network available to ordinary Iranians.
Starlink is outlawed in Iran, but Musk, in recent months, has made it available to victims of devastating floods in Indonesia and, before that, deployed it in Ukraine to help the military and civilians get around widespread Internet blackouts in the early stages of the war with Russia.
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Sunday demanded the Iranian government restore Internet and mobile connectivity and refrain from “unnecessary or disproportionate use of force.”
Trump’s comments came as the Human Rights Activists News Agency confirmed on day 15 of the protests that 544 people had now been confirmed killed and 10,681 detained for taking part in almost 600 protests in 186 cities across all of Iran’s 31 provinces.
The group warned Internet blackout was making it difficult to track casualty numbers but that visual documentation and evidence from mortuaries and facilities used to hold bodies in Tehran suggested that the true death toll was far higher.
Trump’s comments came as the Human Rights Activists News Agency confirmed on day 15 of the protests that 544 people had now been confirmed killed and 10,681 detained for taking part in almost 600 protests in 186 cities across all of Iran’s 31 provinces.
The group warned Internet blackout was making it difficult to track casualty numbers but that visual documentation and evidence from mortuaries and facilities used to hold bodies in Tehran suggested that the true death toll was far higher.
Trump first threatened intervention on Jan. 2 — saying the United States would come to the aid of protesters if the regime killed people demonstrating peacefully — just a few days into the protests, which erupted after Tehran shop merchants came out onto the streets over sky-high inflation and a collapsing Iranian currency.
