DUBAI — Iran’s parliament speaker warned Sunday that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if the United States strikes the Islamic Republic over the ongoing protests roiling the country, as threatened by President Trump.
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf made the threat after nationwide protests challenging Iran’s theocracy saw protestersflood the streets in the country’s capital and its second-largest city into Sunday morning, crossing the two-week mark. At least 538 people have died in violence surrounding the demonstrations, activists said, with fears the death toll is far higher.
With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult.
Those abroad fear the information blackout is emboldening hard-liners within Iran’s security services to launch a bloody crackdown.
Trump offered support for the protesters, saying on social media that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!” The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous U.S. officials, said Saturday night that Trump had been given military options for a strike on Iran, but hadn’t made a final decision.
Parliament rallies
Iranian state television broadcast the parliament session live. Qalibaf, a hard-liner who has run for the presidency in the past, gave a speech applauding police and Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, particularly its all-volunteer Basij unit, for having “stood firm” during the protests.
He went on to directly threaten Israel, “the occupied territory,” as he referred to it, and the U.S. military, possibly with a preemptive strike.
“In the event of an attack on Iran, both the occupied territory and all American military centers, bases and ships in the region will be our legitimate targets,” Qalibaf said. “We do not consider ourselves limited to reacting after the action and will act based on any objective signs of a threat.”
Lawmakers rushed the dais in the Iranian parliament, shouting: “Death to America!”
It remains unclear just how serious Iran is about launching a strike, particularly after its air defenses were destroyed during the 12-day war in June with Israel. Any decision to go to war would rest with Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The U.S. military has said in the Mideast it is “postured with forces that span the full range of combat capability to defend our forces, our partners and allies and U.S. interests.” Iran targeted U.S. forces at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar back in June, while the U.S. Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet is stationed in the island kingdom of Bahrain.
Israel, meanwhile, is “watching closely” the situation between the U.S. and Iran, said an Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to speak to journalists. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio overnight on topics including Iran, the official added.
“The people of Israel, the entire world, are in awe of the tremendous heroism of the citizens of Iran,” said Netanyahu, a longtime Iran hawk.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which relies on activists in Iran cross-checking information, offered the new death toll of 538 on Sunday, a large jump. Of those killed, 490 are protesters and 48 are members of the security forces, it said. The agency also acknowledged receiving claims of far more deaths that it was still assessing and said that more than 10,600 people had been arrested.
The group has offered accurate tolls in previous rounds of unrest in the Islamic Republic. The Iranian government has not offered any overall casualty figures for the demonstrations.
The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the toll amid the communications blackout in Iran.
At the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV mentioned Iran as a place “where ongoing tensions continue to claim many lives.”
“I hope and pray that dialogue and peace may be patiently nurtured in pursuit of the common good of the whole of society,” he said.
Protests in Tehran and Mashhad
Online videos sent out of Iran, probably using Starlink satellite transmitters, purportedly showed demonstrators gathering in northern Tehran’s Punak neighborhood. There, it appeared authorities shut off streets, with protesters waving their lighted mobile phones. Others banged metal while fireworks went off.
“The pattern of protests in the capital has largely taken the form of scattered, short-lived, and fluid gatherings, an approach shaped in response to the heavy presence of security forces and increased field pressure,” the Human Rights Activists News Agency said. “Reports were received of surveillance drones flying overhead and movements by security forces around protest locations, indicating ongoing monitoring and security control.”
In Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city some 450 miles northeast of Tehran, video purported to show protesters confronting security forces. Protests also appeared to happen in Kerman, 500 miles southeast of Tehran.
Iranian state television on Sunday morning had its correspondents appear on the streets in several cities to show calm areas with a date stamp shown on screen. Tehran and Mashhad were not included.
Government rhetoric also ratcheted up Sunday. Ali Larijani, a top security official, accused some demonstrators of “killing people or burning some people, which is very similar to what ISIS does,” referring to the Islamic State militant group.
State TV aired funerals of slain security force members while reporting six others had been killed in Kermanshah. In Fars province, violence killed 13 people, and seven security forces were killed in North Khorasan province, it added. It also showed a pickup truck full of bodies in body bags and later a morgue.
Even Iran’s reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who had been trying to ease anger before the demonstrations exploded in recent days, offered a hardening tone in an interview aired Sunday.
“People have concerns, we should sit with them. … It is our duty, [and] we should resolve their concerns,” Pezeshkian said. “But the higher duty is not to allow a group of rioters to come and destroy the entire society.”
More demonstrations planned
Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi asked in his latest message for demonstrators to take to the streets Sunday.
Demonstrators have shouted in support of Pahlavi 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, which toppled the rule of his late father, that last shah of Iran. Pahlavi’s support of and from Israel has drawn criticism in the past, particularly after the 12-day war.
The demonstrations across Iran began Dec. 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, 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.
Gambrell writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
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