Iran protests ease after crackdown

Iran’s deadly crackdown appears to have broadly quelled protests for now, according to a rights group and residents, as state media reported more arrests yesterday in the shadow of US threats to intervene if killing continues.

After President Donald Trump’s repeated threats of military action against Iran in support of protesters, fears of a US attack have retreated since Wednesday, when Trump said he’d been told killings in the crackdown were easing.

US allies including Saudi Arabia and Qatar conducted intense diplomacy with Washington this week to prevent a US strike, warning of consequences for the wider region that would ultimately impact the United States, a Gulf official said.

The White House said on Thursday that Trump is closely monitoring the situation on the ground, adding that the president and his team have warned Tehran there would be “grave consequences” if killings linked to its crackdown continue.

Trump understands that 800 scheduled executions were halted, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt added, saying the president was keeping “all of his options on the table”.

The United States stands by the “brave people of Iran,” and President Donald Trump “has made it clear all options are on the table to stop the slaughter,” US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told the UN Security Council on Thursday.

Iran’s Deputy UN Ambassador Gholamhossein Darzi said Iran does not seek escalation or confrontation and accused Waltz of resorting “to lies, distortion of facts, and a deliberate misinformation campaign to conceal his country’s direct involvement in steering unrest in Iran to violence.”

Around 3,000 people were arrested during the recent protests in Iran, according to security officials cited by the country’s Tasnim news agency yesterday.

Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused the United States of convening the Security Council in a bid to “justify blatant aggression and interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state” and threats to “solve the Iranian problem in its favorite way: through strikes aimed at overthrowing an undesirable regime.”

“We strongly urge the hot heads in Washington and other capitals … to come to their senses,” he said.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday discussed the situation in Iran in separate calls with Netanyahu and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, and said that Moscow was willing to mediate in the region, the Kremlin said.

Pezeshkian told Putin that the United States and Israel had played a direct role in the unrest, reports Reuters.

Meanwhile, New Zealand said yesterday it has temporarily closed its embassy in Tehran and flown out its diplomats because of worsening security in Iran, reports AFP.

Diplomatic staff left Iran safely on commercial flights overnight, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry said.

The Tehran embassy’s operations were moved to Ankara, Turkey, because of the “deteriorating security situation” in Iran.