President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he is still working to understand how many people in Iran have been killed and arrested during unrest that began late last month, while telling the Iranian government to “show humanity.”
Trump, speaking after consulting with his national security team, said he believes the killing is “significant” and that his administration would “act accordingly.” He said he has not received a confirmed count of how many Iranians have been killed in the protests and that he has heard “five different sets of numbers” about the death toll.
Trump’s remarks came after an earlier announcement that he was cutting off the prospect of talks with Iranian officials amid a protest crackdown. In that message to Iranian citizens, Trump said “help is on its way,” but he did not spell out what help would entail when asked by reporters, saying, “You’re going to have to figure that one out.”
The unrest has been met with mass arrests and deaths, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, which the Associated Press reported relies on a network of activists inside Iran. The agency said that since the protests began Dec. 28, 16,700 people have been arrested and more than 2,500 have been killed, with the vast majority described as protesters. The agency also reported Tuesday that more than 600 protests have taken place across all of Iran’s 31 provinces.
Trump said the message to the Iranian government is they’ve got to “show humanity,” adding that he hopes Iran is “not going to be killing people.” He also described the Iranian government as “badly misbehaving.”
Later Tuesday, at an auto factory in Michigan, Trump addressed Iranian protesters and urged them to keep demonstrating, saying, “Iranian Patriots, keep protesting and take over your institutions if you can.” He added: “Save the names of the killers and abusers that are abusing you,” and “You are being very badly abused.”
Iran’s chief envoy to the United Nations, Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani, denounced Trump’s comments in a letter to U.N. officials as “interventionist rhetoric.” Iravani wrote that Trump’s statement “explicitly encourages political destabilization, incites and invites violence and threatens the sovereignty, territorial integrity and national security of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The Associated Press report said Iranian state media has aired at least 97 confessions from protesters since the protests began, according to a rights group tracking the videos. The report said activists contend the confessions are coerced and that they are a staple of Iran’s hard-line state television, which the report described as the only broadcaster in the country.
The AP also reported that the scale of the protests has been hard to assess because Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations, while online videos show brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire.
Trump’s push on Iran’s crackdown comes as U.S. officials weigh options that include diplomacy and military strikes. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Council officials began meeting Friday to develop options for Trump, the AP reported. Trump said he was undeterred by threats of Iranian retaliation and referenced earlier U.S. strikes, saying, “They better behave.”
The report also said Iran, through the country’s parliamentary speaker, warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if Washington uses force to protect demonstrators. Trump has previously threatened Tehran with military action if the administration found Iran was using deadly force against antigovernment protesters.