Iran protests abate after deadly crackdown, residents and rights group say

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

Fears of a US attack have retreated since Wednesday, when President Donald Trump said he had been told killings in Iran were easing.

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

The White House said on Thursday that Trump and his team had warned Tehran there would be “grave consequences” if there was further bloodshed.

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”.

Read More: Iran warns of ‘decisive response’ to any military aggression at UNSC

The protests erupted on December 28 over soaring inflation in Iran, whose economy has been crippled by sanctions, before spiralling into one of the biggest challenges yet to the clerical establishment that has run Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Axios reported that the director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, David Barnea, arrived in the United States on Friday for talks on the situation in Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Axios also cited US sources as saying the US military was sending additional defensive and offensive capabilities to the region to be ready in case Trump orders a strike. The US military’s Central Command did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Rights group reports heavy security deployments

With information flows from Iran obstructed by an internet blackout, several residents of Tehran said the capital had been quiet since Sunday.

They said drones were flying over the city, where they had seen no sign of protests on Thursday or Friday.

Iranian-Kurdish rights group Hengaw said there had been no protest gatherings since Sunday, but “the security environment remains highly restrictive”.

“Our independent sources confirm a heavy military and security presence in cities and towns where protests previously took place, as well as in several locations that did not experience major demonstrations,” Norway-based Hengaw said in comments to Reuters.

Another resident in a northern city on the Caspian Sea said the streets there also appeared calm. The residents declined to be identified for their safety.

Reports of sporadic unrest

There were, however, indications of unrest in some areas. Hengaw reported that a female nurse was killed by direct gunfire from government forces during protests in Karaj, west of Iran. Reuters was not able to independently verify the report.

The state-affiliated Tasnim news outlet reported that rioters set fire to a local education office in Falavarjan County, in central Isfahan province, on Thursday.

An elderly resident of a town in Iran’s northwestern region, home to many Kurdish Iranians and the focus of some of the biggest flare-ups, said sporadic protests had continued, though not as intensely.

Describing violence earlier in the protests, she said: “I have not seen scenes like that before.”

State-owned Press TV cited Iran’s police chief as saying calm had been restored across the country.

A death toll reported by US-based rights group HRANA has increased little since Wednesday and currently stands at 2,677 people, including 2,478 protesters and 163 people identified as affiliated with the government. Reuters has not been able to independently verify the HRANA figures.

An Iranian official told the news agency earlier this week that about 2,000 people had been killed. The casualty numbers dwarf the death toll from previous bouts of unrest that have been suppressed by the state.

Putin calls Netanyahu, Pezeshkian

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

Pezeshkian told Putin that the US and Israel had played a direct role in the unrest, Iranian state media reported.

Iranian authorities have accused foreign enemies of fomenting protests and said armed people they have identified as terrorists targeted security forces and carried out attacks.

HRANA has reported that more than 19,000 people have been arrested, but Tasnim said 3,000 people had been detained.

Tasnim also reported what it described as the arrest of a large number of leaders of recent riots in the western province of Kermanshah, as well as the arrest of five people accused of vandalising a gas station and a base belonging to the Basij — a branch of the security forces often used to quell unrest — in the southeastern city of Kerman.