Nationwide protests spark crackdown
A crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran has killed at least 538 people and even more are feared dead, activists said Sunday, while Tehran warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America uses force to protect demonstrators.
Another over 10,600 people have been detained over the two weeks of protests, said the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous rounds of unrest in Iran in recent years. It relies on activists in Iran crosschecking information.
Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf made the threat after nationwide protests challenging Iran’s theocracy saw protesters flood the streets in the country’s capital and its second-largest city into Sunday morning, crossing the two-week mark.
Trump offered support for the protesters, saying on social media that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!” The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous US officials, said on Saturday night that Trump had been given military options for a strike on Iran, but hadn’t made a final decision.
Qalibaf went on to directly threaten Israel, “the occupied territory” as he referred to it, and the US military, possibly with a pre-emptive strike.
“In the event of an attack on Iran, both the occupied territory and all American military centres, bases and ships in the region will be our legitimate targets,” Qalibaf said. “We do not consider ourselves limited to reacting after the action and will act based on any objective signs of a threat.” Lawmakers rushed the dais in the Iranian parliament, shouting: “Death to America!”
It remains unclear just how serious Iran is about launching a strike, particularly after its air defences were destroyed during the 12-day war in June with Israel. Any decision to go to war would rest with Iran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
On Saturday, Iran’s attorney general Mohammad Movahedi Azad warned that anyone joining the protests would be considered an “enemy of God”, a charge that carries the death penalty, state television reported.
With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult.
Those abroad fear the information blackout is emboldening hard-liners within Iran’s security services to launch a bloody crackdown.
The US military has said in the Mideast it is “postured with forces that span the full range of combat capability to defend our forces, our partners and allies and US interests.”
Iran targeted US forces at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar back in June, while the US Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet is stationed in the island kingdom of Bahrain.
Trump administration officials have had preliminary discussions about how to carry out an attack on Iran if needed to follow through on Trump’s threats.
One option being discussed is a large-scale aerial strike on multiple Iranian military targets, sources told The Wall Street Journal in an article published on Saturday. Trump previously stated that if the Iranian regime forces “start killing people,” the US will “hit them really hard” during an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show on Thursday.
Israel, meanwhile, is “watching closely” the situation between the US and Iran, said an Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to not being authorized to speak to journalists. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio overnight on topics including Iran, the official added.
The protests began on December 28 in response to soaring prices, before turning against the clerical rulers who have governed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Authorities accuse the U.S. and Israel of fomenting unrest.