US President Donald Trump warned Tuesday of unspecified “very strong action” if Iranian authorities go ahead with threatened hangings of some protesters, with Tehran calling American warnings a “pretext for military intervention”.
International outrage has built over the crackdown that a rights group claimed, without evidence, has likely killed thousands during protests posing one of the biggest challenges yet to Iran’s clerical leadership.
Iran’s UN mission posted a statement on X, vowing that Washington’s “playbook” would “fail again”.
“US fantasies and policy toward Iran are rooted in regime change, with sanctions, threats, engineered unrest, and chaos serving as the modus operandi to manufacture a pretext for military intervention,” the post said.
Iranian authorities have insisted they had regained control of the country after successive nights of mass protests nationwide since Thursday.
Rights groups accuse the government of fatally shooting protesters and masking the scale of the crackdown with an internet blackout that has now surpassed the five-day mark.
Trump – who earlier told the protesters in Iran that “help is on its way” – told CBS News that the United States would act if Iran began hanging protesters.
Tehran prosecutors said Iranian authorities would press capital charges of “moharebeh”, or “waging war against God”, against some suspects arrested over recent demonstrations.
“We will take very strong action if they do such a thing,” said the American leader, who has repeatedly threatened Iran with military intervention.
“When they start killing thousands of people – and now you’re telling me about hanging. We’ll see how that’s going to work out for them,” Trump said.
New videos on social media, with locations verified by AFP, showed bodies lined up in the Kahrizak morgue just south of the Iranian capital, with the corpses wrapped in black bags and distraught relatives searching for loved ones.
International phone links were restored on Tuesday, but only for outgoing calls, according to an AFP journalist, and the quality remained spotty, with frequent interruptions.
However, the internet remains suspended in the country for more than 132 hours now.
