Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, warned on Sunday that any attack on the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would be a declaration of war.
In an apparent response to speculation that Donald Trump is considering an attempt to assassinate or remove Khamenei, Pezeshkian said in a post on X: “An attack on the great leader of our country is tantamount to a full-scale war with the Iranian nation.”
The Iranian president also blamed the US for the protests that have rocked Iran over the last two weeks and led to thousands of deaths among demonstrators.
“If there are hardship and constraints in the lives of the dear people of Iran, one of the main causes is the longstanding hostility and inhumane sanctions imposed by the US government and its allies,” Pezeshkian said.
Trump, in an interview with Politico on Saturday, called for an end to Khamenei’s nearly 40-year reign, calling him “a sick man who should run his country properly and stop killing people”.
The latest wave of unrest in Iran began on 28 December when widespread anger over soaring inflation, a collapsing currency and economic hardship spilled out of Tehran and into cities across the country, rapidly transforming demonstrations over living costs into broad anti-government protests demanding regime change.
As the movement grew, Iranian authorities responded on 8 January with a near total shutdown of internet and phone services, cutting off most global connectivity in an effort to suppress communication, obscure the scale of the unrest and stifle independent reporting, leaving many Iranians isolated from the outside world.
Last Tuesday, Trump urged Iranians to keep protesting and to “take over your institutions”, telling them “help is on its way”, as reports grew that a strike on Iran was imminent.
On Wednesday the US came close to launching military strikes on Iran but ultimately pulled back as Trump opted to pause amid mounting regional and diplomatic pressure.
The US news website Axios reported that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had warned Trump that Israel was not prepared for Iranian retaliation and questioned the effectiveness of a US strike. Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, had also urged restraint, according to Axios, citing the risks to regional stability.
“It was really close,” a US official told Axios, adding that the order to strike never came.
In a social media post on Friday, Trump thanked Tehran’s leaders, claiming they had called off scheduled executions of 800 people, including that of Erfan Soltani, 26, the first Iranian protester sentenced to death since the unrest began.
Soltani, a clothing shop employee, was arrested in Karaj, a city north-west of Tehran, after participating in protests and was due to be executed on Wednesday, according to rights groups. Since his arrest, his family had received little news about his condition besides a brief, scheduled visit before his expected execution.
Over the weekend, Soltani’s family were able to visit him and establish that he was alive. “I am relieved to know my cousin Erfan is alive,” said Soltani’s cousin Somayeh, who lives in Germany. “However, I am worried because I received news that he has been tortured under custody and hasn’t received medical attention yet.
“I appeal to the international community to please bring attention to his detention conditions. I also appeal to European politicians to please sponsor his case to demand medical assistance for Erfan. I am also deeply worried for the thousands of other protesters in custody.”
At least 5,000 people have been killed in protests in Iran, including about 500 security personnel, an Iranian official in the region said on Sunday, citing verified figures and accusing “terrorists and armed rioters” of killing “innocent Iranians”.
During a speech on Thursday, Khamenei acknowledged for the first time that thousands of people had been killed, “some in an inhuman, savage manner”. He blamed the US for the death toll, railing against Trump, whom he called a “criminal” for his support of the demonstrations, and calling for strict punishment of the protesters.
On Sunday, monitors said some internet access had been restored in Iran. “Traffic data indicates a significant return to some online services including Google, suggesting that heavily filtered access has been enabled, corroborating user reports of partial restoration,” Netblocks said in a social media post.
An Iranian official who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue told Reuters some of the heaviest clashes and highest number of deaths had been in the Iranian Kurdish areas in the country’s north-west. Kurdish separatists have been active there and flare-ups have been among the most violent in recent periods of unrest.
The Human Rights Activists news agency said 24,348 protesters had been arrested in the crackdown.
No protests have been reported for days in Iran, where the streets have returned to an uneasy calm. Instead, some Iranians chanted anti-Khamenei slogans from the windows of their homes on Saturday night, the chants reverberating around neighbourhoods in Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan, witnesses said.
AFP, Reuters and AP contributed to this report.
