DUBAI — Protests sweeping across Iran neared the two-week mark Saturday, with the country’s government acknowledging the ongoing demonstrations despite an intensifying crackdown and as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world.
With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. But the toll in the protests has grown to at least 72 people killed and more than 2,300 detained, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. Iranian state TV is reporting on security force casualties while portraying control over the nation.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has signaled a coming clampdown, despite U.S. warnings. Tehran escalated its threats Saturday, with the Iran’s attorney general, Mohammad Movahedi Azad, warning that anyone taking part in protests will be considered an “enemy of God,” a death penalty charge. The statement carried by Iranian state television said even those who “helped rioters” would face the charge.
“Prosecutors must carefully and without delay, by issuing indictments, prepare the grounds for the trial and decisive confrontation with those who, by betraying the nation and creating insecurity, seek foreign domination over the country,” the statement read. “Proceedings must be conducted without leniency, compassion or indulgence.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered support for the protesters.
“The United States supports the brave people of Iran,” Rubio wrote Saturday on the social platform X. The State Department separately warned: “Do not play games with President Trump. When he says he’ll do something, he means it.”
State TV split-screen highlights Iran’s challenge
Saturday marks the start of the work week in Iran, but many schools and universities reportedly held online classes, Iranian state TV reported. Internal Iranian government websites are believed to be functioning.
State TV repeatedly played a driving, martial orchestral arrangement from the “Epic of Khorramshahr” by Iranian composer Majid Entezami, while showing pro-government demonstrations. The song, aired repeatedly during the 12-day war launched by Israel, honors Iran’s 1982 liberation of the city of Khorramshahr during the Iran-Iraq war. It has been used in videos of protesting women cutting away their hair to protest the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini.
It also repeatedly aired video of purported protesters shooting at security forces.
“Field reports indicate that peace prevailed in most cities of the country at night,” a state TV anchor reported Saturday morning. “After a number of armed terrorists attacked public places and set fire to people’s private property last night, there was no news of any gathering or chaos in Tehran and most provinces last night.”
That was contradicted by an online video verified by the Associated Press that showed demonstrations in northern Tehran’s Saadat Abad area, with what appeared to be thousands on the street.
“Death to Khamenei!” a man chanted.
The semiofficial Fars news agency, believed to be close to Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and one of the few media outlets able to publish to the outside world, released surveillance video of what it said came from demonstrations in Isfahan. In it, a protester appeared to fire a long gun, while others set fires and threw gasoline bombs at what appeared to be a government compound.
The Young Journalists’ Club, associated with state TV, reported that protesters killed three members of the Revolutionary Guard’s volunteer Basij force in the city of Gachsaran. It also reported a security official was stabbed to death in Hamadan province, a police officer killed in the port city of Bandar Abbas and another in Gilan, as well as one person slain in Mashhad.
The semiofficial Tasnim news agency, also close to the Guard, reported that authorities detained nearly 200 people belonging to what it described as “operational terrorist teams.” It alleged those arrested had weapons including firearms, grenades and gasoline bombs.
State television also aired video of a funeral service attended by hundreds in Qom, a Shiite seminary city just south of Tehran.
More weekend demonstrations planned
Iran’s theocracy cut off the nation from the internet and international telephone calls Thursday, though it allowed some state-owned and semiofficial media to publish. Qatar’s state-funded Al Jazeera news network reported live from Iran, but it appeared to be the only major foreign outlet able to work.
Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who called for protests Thursday and Friday, in his latest message urged demonstrators to take to the streets Saturday and Sunday. Pahlavi, the eldest son of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, exhorted protesters to carry Iran’s old lion-and-sun flag and other national symbols used during the time of his father’s rule to “claim public spaces as your own.”
Pahlavi’s support of and from Israel has drawn criticism in the past — particularly after last year’s 12-day Israel-Iran war. Demonstrators have shouted in support of the shah in some protests, but it isn’t clear whether that’s support for Pahlavi himself or a desire to return to a time before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Online video purported to show protests ongoing Saturday night.
The demonstrations began Dec. 28 over the collapse of the Iranian currency, the rial, which trades at more than 1.4 million to $1, as the country’s economy is squeezed by international sanctions in part levied over its nuclear program. The protests intensified and grew into calls directly challenging Iran’s theocracy.
Airlines have canceled some flights into Iran over the unrest. Austrian Airlines said Saturday it had suspended its flights to Iran “as a precautionary measure” through Monday. Turkish Airlines earlier announced the cancellation of 17 flights to three cities in Iran.
Meanwhile, concern is growing that the internet shutdown will allow Iran’s security forces to embark on a bloody crackdown, as they have in other rounds of antigovernment demonstrations. Ali Rahmani, the son of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, noted that security forces killed hundreds in a 2019 protest, “so we can only fear the worst.”
“They are fighting, and losing their lives, against a dictatorial regime,” Rahmani said.
Gambrell writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Oleg Cetinic in Paris and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.
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