NPR News – Hundreds of protesters have been killed in Iran, rights groups say, as videos showing security forces violently trying to suppress demonstrations filter through, despite an internet blackout imposed by the Iranian regime facing a nationwide challenge to its decades-long rule.
As the White House weighs whether to respond to the crackdown on this popular uprising against the Iranian clerical establishment long hostile to America, President Trump has both threatened “strong” military action against Iran should more demonstrators be killed, and said on Air Force One late Sunday that a meeting was “being set up” with Iranian officials.
“Iran wants to negotiate, yes. We might meet with them,” he said. “But we may have to act because of what is happening before the meeting.”
Iran, which has threatened to strike Israel and American bases and ships in the region should the U.S. take military action against it, has indicated that it would be open to negotiation. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, on Monday said a channel remained open with the United States. “Through that channel, the necessary messages are exchanged,” he said.
Officials will brief Trump on Tuesday on options for intervening, according to the Wall Street Journal. These could include everything from military strikes, to using secret cyber weapons, to sanctions, to helping meet the needs of the protesters.
Death toll mounts
The Human Rights Activists in Iran monitoring group, or HRA, that is based in the United States but maintains extensive networks across Iran, has documented 495 fatalities among protesters, with over 500 other reported cases under review. Some members of the Iranian security forces have also been killed. HRA says over 10,600 people have been arrested in these 15 days of protests.
“We’re seeing horrifying images,” Skylar Thompson, the deputy director of HRA, told NPR, adding that security forces are using “military grade weapons” to disperse crowds.
Protests that began over the collapse of the country’s currency in an economy already squeezed by international sanctions have spread and grown into calls to end Iran’s theocracy. HRA says it has documented some 580 protests in more than 185 cities in the last two weeks.
The regime responded by cutting the country’s internet and phone networks last Thursday. Despite the blackout, some videos of the demonstrations have reached the rest of the world, likely using Starlink satellite transmitters. They show massive crowds of demonstrators, and, as anger mounts, there have been chants of “death to the dictator,” referring to the country’s supreme leader, 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
On Monday, in response to the protests, Iranian leaders drew large crowds of pro-government demonstrators to the streets. Iranian state television showed images of demonstrators thronging Tehran toward Enghelab Square, or “Islamic Revolution” Square, in the capital. It called the demonstration an “Iranian uprising against American-Zionist terrorism.”
State broadcasters have framed the anti-government protests as actions fomented by the U.S. and Israel and have said “armed rioters” were being arrested. On Saturday the Iranian attorney general warned that anyone taking part would be considered an “enemy of God,” a sentence that carries the death penalty. Iran’s military said it was ready to “firmly safeguard national interests.”
Footage geolocated to a morgue in Kahrizak just south of the Iranian capital, and highlighted by various rights groups, shows bodies wrapped in black mortuary bags on the ground outside as grieving relatives search among them for loved ones. A health worker at a hospital in Tehran told BBC Persian that protesters were arriving with gunshot wounds to the head and chest.
Trump told Fox News last week that he has “put Iran on notice” and that if the regime shoots at demonstrators the U.S. will hit Iran “very hard.” “I’ve said it very loud and very clear, that’s what we’re going to do,” he said. On Sunday, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that with its violent response to the demonstrators, Iran’s leaders were “starting to” cross the threshold that could trigger a U.S. response.
Economic crisis
Iranian experts say the country’s regime is the weakest it’s been since the Islamic Republic came into existence in 1979. The collapsed economy is making life untenable for many Iranians. “There are people who can’t buy dairy or meat or, you know, just even beans,” Golnaz Esfandiari, the managing editor of the Persian language service of Radio Free Europe, told NPR. “Also people have had enough of the nearly 50 years of repression, mismanagement, corruption.”
Iran has recently lost geopolitical status, as proxy militias that it had long used as a security buffer and to project influence come under attack. Israel’s war in Gaza has dramatically reduced the power of Hamas. And the collapse of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria a little over a year ago cut off vital supply lines to the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia, Hezbollah.
“Syria was a lifeline for Hezbollah,” said  Lina Khatib, visiting scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. “Syria was the place through which Hezbollah got a lot of its finances as well as weapons, from Iran.”
Khatib says the Iranian regime “persistently for decades asked the people of Iran to sacrifice, including economically, for the sake of the survival of the Islamic Republic” as it poured countless sums of money into these proxies. But the weakening of these militias, she says, combined with Israeli and American strikes on targets inside Iran in June last year, have “left people feeling that they sacrificed for nothing.”
Outside Iran, Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the country’s last shah and a prominent voice in the fragmented opposition, has encouraged Iranians to continue their demonstrations. “Do not abandon the streets. My heart is with you,” he said in a recorded address. “I know that I will soon be by your side.” While some videos have emerged showing protesters calling for Pahlavi to take the reins of power, it’s not clear how widespread this support is.
For now, experts say, expectations that the regime could collapse may be premature. While the protests have seen Iranians from many demographics voice their grievances, there is no sign yet of defections or dissent in the security apparatus that maintains the country’s theocracy.