DUBAI: About 2,000 people including security personnel have been killed in protests in Iran, an Iran official said on Tuesday, the first time authorities have acknowledged the high death toll from an intense crackdown on two weeks of nationwide unrest.
The Iranian official, speaking to Reuters, said that people he called terrorists were behind the deaths of both protesters and security personnel. The official, who declined to be named, did not give a breakdown of who had been killed.
The unrest, sparked by dire economic conditions, has posed the biggest internal challenge to Iran’s clerical rulers for at least three years and has come at a time of intensifying international pressure after Israeli and U.S. strikes last year.
On Monday evening U.S. President Donald Trump announced 25% import tariffs on products from any country doing business with Iran – a major oil exporter. Trump has also said more military action is among options he is weighing to punish Iran over the crackdown, saying earlier this month “we are locked and loaded”.
Tehran has not yet responded publicly to Trump’s announcement of the tariffs, but it was swiftly criticized by China. Iran, already under heavy U.S. sanctions, exports much of its oil to China, with Turkey, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and India among its other top trading partners.
Despite the nationwide protests and years of external pressure, there are as yet no signs of fracture in the Islamic Republic’s security elite that could bring an end to the clerical system in power since a 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“The government sees security forces and protesters as its children. To the best of our abilities, we have tried and will try to listen to their voices even if some have tried to hijack such protests,” government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Tuesday.
Authorities have accused the U.S. and Israel of fomenting unrest alongside the unidentified people who they call terrorists and who they say have taken over protests.
Parliament member Mohammadreza Sabaghian, who represents an area in Yazd, in central Iran, said the government needed to resolve people’s dissatisfaction, warning that otherwise “the same events will occur with greater intensity”.
The protests began on December 28 over the fall in value of the local currency and have grown into wider demonstrations over dire economic hardships and defiant calls for the fall of the current establishment.
POTENTIAL DIALOGUE WITH WASHINGTON
Iranian authorities said on Monday they were keeping communication channels with Washington open as Trump considered how to respond to Iran’s crackdown.
“We have the duty to do dialogue and we will certainly do so,” government spokesperson Mohajerani said on Tuesday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday that while airstrikes were one of many alternatives open to Trump, “diplomacy is always the first option for the president”.
“What you’re hearing publicly from the Iranian regime is quite different from the messages the administration is receiving privately, and I think the president has an interest in exploring those messages,” she said.
Foreign Minister Araqchi said Tehran was studying ideas proposed by Washington, though these were “incompatible” with U.S. threats.
“Communications between (U.S. special envoy Steve) Witkoff and me continued before and after the protests and are still ongoing,” he told Al Jazeera on Monday. –Agencies
