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Trump says Iran protests easing, but will not rule out military strikes
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Trump says Iran protests easing, but will not rule out military strikes

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US President Donald Trump said he had been told killings in Iran’s crackdown on protests were waning and that he believed there was currently no plan for large-scale executions, taking a wait-and-see approach after earlier threatened intervention.
After Iran’s foreign minister said Iran had “no plan” to hang people, Iranian state media reported Thursday that a 26-year-old man arrested during protests in the city of Karaj would not face the death penalty.
Rights group Hengaw, which reported earlier this week that Erfan Soltani would be executed on Wednesday, said a previously communicated order for his execution had been postponed, citing his relatives.
In a social media post Thursday, Trump responded to a news report that an Iranian protester was no longer on death row, writing: “This is good news. Hopefully this will continue!”

Trump said he had been told by “very important sources on the other side” that killings were declining during the crackdown.

He did not rule out possible US military action but said his government had received a “very good explanation” from Iran.
Iranian state media said that while Soltani was accused of conspiring against “internal security and propaganda activities against the regime,” the death penalty does not apply to such charges.

Trump’s comments on Wednesday caused oil prices to retreat from multi-month highs and gold fell after a record peak on Thursday. Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene on behalf of protesters in Iran, where the clerical establishment has cracked down on nationwide unrest since December 28.

The protests appear to be subsiding; new US sanctions

Reached by Reuters on Wednesday and Thursday, people in Iran said the protests appeared to have subsided since Monday. Information flows are hampered by an internet outage that lasted a week.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Thursday that the government was trying to address some of the economic problems that first sparked the protests, adding that it planned to tackle corruption and exchange rates and that this would improve the purchasing power of poorer people.

Still, the US tightened pressure on Iran on Thursday, imposing sanctions on five Iranian officials it accused of being behind the crackdown, saying they were tracking Iranian leaders’ funds being transferred to banks around the world.

The US Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on the Secretary of the Supreme Council for National Security, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the commanders of law enforcement forces.
Sanctions were also imposed on Fardis prison, where the US State Department said women “suffered cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”.

The group of seven countries said it was prepared to impose additional restrictive measures on Iran if the country continued to crack down.

Four Arab states call for de-escalation

Four Arab states engaged in intensive diplomacy with the US and Iran this week to prevent an impending US attack on Iran over the use of force against protesters that they feared would have consequences for the entire region, a Gulf official said.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Egypt were involved in diplomacy for more than 48 hours before Trump signaled Thursday that he had ultimately decided not to launch an attack for now, saying killings in Iran were waning.

The four countries had made it clear to the US that any attack would have repercussions on the broader region in terms of both security and economics, which would ultimately impact the US itself, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
They told Iran that any retaliatory strike it launched against U.S. facilities in the Gulf would impact Iran’s relations with other countries in the region, the official said.

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