Funerals for three protesters were held last week, where mourners were reported to have been chanting slogans opposing the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Some of the protesters had chanted “death to the dictators”, in what now amounts to the largest nationwide protests since the death of a 22-year-old woman in custody who had allegedly been arrested for incorrectly wearing a hijab in 2022.
In that protest, which centered around women's rights, more than 300 people were killed when the government brutally cracked down on demonstrators. The latest round of protests has instead coalesced around a collapse in living standards and has spread from the capital of Tehran to towns across the country.
Riot police had been deployed, with tear gas fired into crowds of demonstrators. Two died in the south-western city of Lordegan as a result. But Mr Trump's intervention has been condemned by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, which said in a statement that the US was “escalating tensions” in the region and vowed that their nation's response, should Mr Trump follow through on his warning, would be “swift, decisive, and comprehensive”.
Trump's warning that the US would step in if further protesters were killed comes just over six months after the United States bombed the nation's nuclear sites. In response to the protests, the United States State Department shared footage of the protests on social media, saying that the “courtage of the Iranian people is undeniable” and praised the demonstrators' “resolve in the face of repression”.
State-aligned media in Iran has said that there have been at least 10 deaths since last Wednesday, including two men who authorities have claimed were members of a paramilitary group affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards. However the Human Rights organization, Hengaw, has said there have been 132 arrests, 12 of which were women and children.
After Mr Trump made his warning, an Iranian politician, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, took to social media to say that the President's words made “all American bases and forces across the region legitimate targets in response to any possible adventurism”.