By Parisa Hafezi
Jan 18 (Reuters) – Iran’s president warned on Sunday that any U.S. attack would prompt a “stern response” from Tehran after an Iranian official in the region said at least 5,000 people – including around 500 security personnel – had been killed in nationwide protests.
Iran’s protests last month in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar over economic grievances quickly became politicized and spread nationwide, drawing participants from across generations and income groups — shopkeepers, students, men and women, poor and rich — calling for an end to clerical rule.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene if protesters are killed in the streets or executed. He said in an interview with Politico on Saturday: “It’s time to find new leadership in Iran.”
Iran signaled on Sunday that it may move to execute people arrested during the unrest, and its clerical rulers are trying to prevent Trump from taking action in the face of mounting international pressure for the bloodiest unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Iranian President Masoud Pezhekian warned in X that “Tehran’s response to any unjust aggression will be harsh and regrettable” and that any attack on the country’s supreme leader would be “amount to an all-out war against the nation”.
Rights groups report 24,000 arrested
Demonstrations subsided after a violent crackdown last week.
The US-based rights group HRANA said the death toll had reached 3,308 on Saturday and another 4,382 cases were under review. It has confirmed more than 24,000 arrests.
On Friday, Trump thanked Tehran’s leaders in a social media post, saying they had canceled the scheduled executions of 800 people. He has moved US military assets to the region but has not specified what he might do.
A day later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Trump a “criminal”, acknowledging the “several thousand deaths” he blamed on “terrorists and rioters” linked to the US and Israel.
Iran’s judiciary has indicated that executions may go ahead.
“A series of actions have been identified as mohareb, which is one of the most severe Islamic punishments,” Iranian judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir told a news conference on Sunday.
Mohreb, an Islamic legal term meaning war against God, is punishable by death under Iranian law.
An Iranian official told Reuters that the number of confirmed deaths was unlikely to rise “sharply”, adding that “armed groups in Israel and abroad” had supported and equipped those taking to the streets.
The clerical establishment regularly blames foreign enemies, including the United States and Israel, a staunch enemy of the Islamic Republic that launched military strikes in June.
Internet blackouts were partially lifted for a few hours on Saturday but internet watchdog group NetBlocks said they had resumed later.
A resident of Tehran said that last week he saw riot police shoot directly at a group of protesters, mostly young men and women. Videos circulating on social media, some of which have been verified by Reuters, show security forces cracking down on demonstrations across the country.
The highest death toll in the Kurdish regions
An Iranian official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the case, also said the country’s northwestern Iranian Kurdish region has seen the worst clashes and the most deaths.
Kurdish separatists are active there and instigators have been the most violent during past periods of unrest.
Three sources told Reuters on January 14 that armed Kurdish separatist groups had tried to cross the border from Iraq into Iran in a sign that foreign entities could take advantage of the instability.
Faizan Ali, a 40-year-old medical doctor from Lahore, said he had to cut short his trip to Iran to visit his Iranian wife because “there is no internet or communication with my family in Pakistan”.
“I saw a violent mob burning buildings, banks and cars. I even saw a man stab a passerby,” he told Reuters after returning to Lahore.
(Additional reporting by Mubasher Bukhari in Lahore, Writing by Parisa Hafezi, Editing by Alexander Smith and Philippa Fletcher)
