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, one rights group estimates, have killed at least 2,000 people during a brutal crackdown on the demonstrations — will pay a “big price.”
“To all Iranian patriots, keep protesting. Take over your institutions if possible and save the name of the killers and the abusers that are abusing you,” Trump said in remarks to the Detroit Economic Club during a trip to Michigan on Tuesday, echoing a statement he posted earlier in the day to Truth Social. “I’ve canceled all meetings with the Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters stops. And all I say to them is help is on its way,” he added.
Trump’s escalating rhetoric and the soaring death toll from inside Iran come as the White House said this week that Trump’s administration was weighing diplomatic options, along with potential responses including military strikes. 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 Washington Post could not independently verify the toll in part due to a nationwide communications blackout.
“It’s a full-on war,” said a woman who spoke to The Post by phone from the suburbs of Tehran, providing a rare account of the crackdown since the government-imposed blackout began.
After joining the protests Friday, she described running from security forces into a dark alley. “I didn’t have my glasses or contact lenses so I could not see properly,” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
“I saw many bags on the ground and thought they were rubbish,” the woman said. “I was running in that alley to get to a main road when I hit one of the bags. They were bodies, dead bodies. I can’t know how many.”
Videos showing similar scenes have begun to emerge from Iran despite cuts to internet and phone lines. One video that could not be verified by The Post shows dozens of corpses in body bags.
In a separate incident, the woman in Tehran’s suburbs said she saw security forces raiding a small clinic where injured protesters were receiving treatment. “They went in, we heard shootings and they left. Then there were women and men shouting and crying,” she said. “I went inside; they had killed the two injured protesters who had come to the clinic. People were just shouting and crying.”
The Iranian government’s decision to launch a violent crackdown on the protests appears to signal its desperation, according to 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 situation in Iran is dire. The regime is fighting for its survival and is deploying overwhelming force against protesters,” he said.
A second European official with direct knowledge of what’s happening inside Iran said government forces are arresting thousands and employing other brutal tactics.
“The regime is also leaving the dead bodies of protesters on the streets as a warning to all Iranians,” the official said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Monday that Tehran was keeping lines of communication with the United States 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.
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.”
Iran has warned that Israel and U.S. military bases in the region would be “legitimate targets” in the event of a U.S. attack on Iran.
“Israel has powerful options short of joining overt U.S. military action, and for now Washington likely prefers it that way,” said Mark Dubowitz, who heads the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based organization that has long advocated a hard line toward Tehran. “But Israel’s commitment to bringing down the regime in Iran should not be doubted.”
On 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.
“The rising number of casualties in Iran is horrifying. I unequivocally condemn the excessive use of force and continued restriction of freedom,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement Tuesday.
“Further sanctions on those responsible for the repression will be swiftly proposed,” she said, adding that the European Union has already put sanctions on 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 on 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.”
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.
Alec Dent, Ellen Francis and Aaron Wiener contributed to this report.
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