Protests abate after crackdown, say Iran residents, rights group

Iran’s crackdown appears to have broadly quelled protests for now, according to a rights group and residents, as state media reported more arrests on Friday in the shadow of repeated US threats to intervene if the killing continues.

Fears of a US attack have retreated since Wednesday, when President Donald Trump said he’d been told killings in Iran were easing. US allies, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, conducted intense diplomacy with Washington this week to prevent a US strike, warning of repercussions for the wider region that would ultimately impact the ⁠United States, a Gulf official said.

The White House said on Thursday that Trump and his team have warned Tehran there would be “grave consequences” if there was further bloodshed.

Trump understands that 800 scheduled executions were halted, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt added, saying the president was keeping “all of his options on the table.”

More accounts of the violence have been spreading after a communications blackout was lifted earlier this week. One woman in Tehran told reporters by phone that her daughter was killed on Friday after joining a demonstration near their home. “She was 15 years old. She was not a terrorist, not a rioter. Basij forces followed her as she was trying to return home,” she said, referring to a branch of the security forces often used to quell unrest.

The protests erupted on Dec.28 over soaring inflation in Iran, where the economy has been crippled by sanctions, before spiralling into one of the biggest challenges yet to the establishment that has run Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

David Barnea, the director of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, was in the US on Friday for talks on Iran, according to a source familiar with the matter who said that the Israeli spy chief was expected to meet White House envoy Steve Witkoff.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The United States is expected to send additional offensive and defensive capabilities to the region, but the exact make-up of those forces and the timing of their arrival was still unclear, a US official said speaking on condition of anonymity.

The US military’s Central Command declined to comment, saying it does not discuss ship movements.

Several residents of Tehran said the capital had been quiet since Sunday. They said drones were flying over the city, where they’d seen no sign of protests on Thursday or Friday.

Iranian-Kurdish rights group Hengaw said that there had been no protest gatherings since Sunday, but “the security environment remains highly restrictive.”

“Our independent sources confirm a heavy military and security presence in cities and towns where protests previously took place, as well as in several locations that did not experience major demonstrations,” Norway-based Hengaw said in comments to Reuters.

Another resident in a northern city on the Caspian Sea said the streets also appeared calm.

The residents declined to be identified for their safety.

There were, however, indications of unrest in some areas.

Hengaw reported that a female nurse was killed by direct gunfire from government forces during protests in Karaj, west of Tehran. Reuters was not able to independently verify the report.

The state-affiliated Tasnim news outlet reported that rioters set fire to a local education office in Falavarjan County, in central Isfahan Province, on Thursday.

An elderly resident of a town in Iran’s northwestern region, where many Kurdish Iranians live and which has been the focus for many of the biggest flare-ups, said sporadic protests had continued, though not as intensely.

Describing violence earlier in the protests, she said: “I have not seen scenes like that before.” Video circulating online, which Reuters was able to verify as having been recorded in a forensic medical centre in Tehran, showed dozens of bodies lying on floors and stretchers, most in bags but some uncovered.

Reuters