President Donald Trump said Tuesday that “help is on its way” to anti-regime protesters in Iran and warned that the country’s government — whose security forces, rights groups estimate, have killed as many as 2,000 people during a brutal crackdown on the demonstrations — will pay a “big price.”
“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
The White House said this week that his administration was weighing diplomatic options while considering potential responses, including military strikes.
The warning came as human rights groups monitoring the protests warned of an escalating human toll, amid a nationwide communications blackout. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency estimated Tuesday that more than 2,000 people have been killed since demonstrations began on Dec. 28, including 135 people affiliated with the government. The Post could not independently verify the toll.
“The situation in Iran is dire. The regime is fighting for its survival and is deploying overwhelming force against protesters,” said a European diplomat briefed on the situation in Iran, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with reporters.
The Iranian offer of negotiation “is not a gesture of compromise but an attempt to buy time — time to crush the protest movement and break the will of the population,” the diplomat said. If Trump chooses to negotiate with Iran’s leadership, the diplomat said, “the regime may not only survive this moment but emerge emboldened, acting with greater impunity and brutality.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Monday that Tehran was keeping lines of communication with the U.S. open and is ready for either “war” or dialogue. “We are not warmongers, but we are prepared for war. … We are also prepared for negotiations, but fair negotiations, with equal rights and mutual respect,” he said to a gathering of ambassadors in Iran.
Also Monday, Trump imposed an immediate 25 percent tariff on goods from nations doing business with Iran, which will mean higher prices for American importers of products from major countries, such as China, India and Turkey.
As Trump’s rhetoric toward Iran grows increasingly hawkish, Europe has also started taking further diplomatic steps against the Iranian government.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday that further sanctions against Tehran’s government would be “swiftly proposed” in response to an “excessive use of force” against anti-regime protesters in the country.
“The rising number of casualties in Iran is horrifying. I unequivocally condemn the excessive use of force and continued restriction of freedom,” von der Leyen said in a statement.
“Further sanctions on those responsible for the repression will be swiftly proposed,” she said, adding that the E.U. has already sanctioned the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “in its entirety.”
E.U. foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced this week that she was willing to propose new sanctions against Iran over its brutal response to the protests, in addition to the sweeping sanctions that the bloc has imposed on Iran over human rights abuses, nuclear activities and support for Russia.
“The courage of the Iranian people is humbling,” Kallas said in a joint news conference with German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius in Berlin on Tuesday. “The regime has a track record of brutally suppressing protests, and no one knows what the next days will bring. The heavy-handed and brutal response by the security forces is unacceptable and exposes a regime afraid of its own people.”
Videos posted to social media this week — which could not immediately be verified by The Washington Post — showed dozens of corpses in body bags; these are the latest videos to have leaked from Iran following days of an internet blackout.
Kallas said it was hard to predict what would happen with the Iranian government, suggesting that it “might go like the Assad regime fell” — referring to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, whom rebel forces ousted in December 2024 — but that “very often these regimes are very, very resilient.”
“What we continue to do is support the civil society, and we are also putting more sanctions on the ones who are using violence against the peaceful protesters,” Kallas said.
On Monday, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola announced that Iranian diplomats and representatives were banned from all European Parliament premises in Brussels; Strasbourg, France; and Luxembourg to “avoid legitimizing this regime.” Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel announced Tuesday that he had summoned Iran’s ambassador to the Netherlands to The Hague — a diplomatic tool to show the host country’s dissatisfaction — over the “bloody repression of peaceful demonstrations.”
Ellen Francis and Aaron Wiener contributed to this report.
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