- President Donald Trump publicly urged Iranian protesters to overthrow their government, threatened accountability for killings, canceled talks with Iranian officials and signaled openness to military action.
- Amid near-total internet blackouts, human rights groups and media estimate the death toll in the protests to be in the thousands, with Reuters citing more than 2,000 and The New York Times at least 3,000.
- Witnesses, doctors and hospital staff describe a violent crackdown involving snipers, automatic weapons, mass casualties and overwhelmed hospitals treating close-range gunshot wounds.
After nearly 2½ weeks of public marches and gatherings, Iranian protesters received a call to action from President Donald Trump Tuesday morning.
The president asked Iranians to stay in the fight, “take over” their government and “save the names of killers and abusers.”
“They will pay a big price,” he said. Trump added that he had canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the killings stop.
He concluded, “Help Is On Its Way. MIGA!!!”
“MIGA,” which stands for “Make Iran Great Again,” has been a rallying cry among those calling for the U.S. to help the protesters.
With internet outages in the country going on five days, it’s been difficult to get an accurate estimate of the death toll, but it is likely in the thousands.
Citing anonymous Iranian authorities, Reuters estimates the death toll to exceed 2,000, and The New York Times estimates it has reached at least 3,000.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday that Trump was working through the decision of whether to bomb sites in the country. Trump “has shown he’s unafraid to use military options if and when he deems necessary,” Leavitt said.
Several senators have expressed support for Trump getting involved in the conflict, including Sens. John Curtis, R-Utah, John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Images of the brutality emerge from Iran
HRANA, a human rights advocacy group, told The New York Times that as Iranians sporadically gain access to the internet, the reported death toll jumps.
On Saturday, HRANA reported that the toll was 70 dead, and by Monday, the number jumped to 572 dead.
Accompanying the death toll, videos taken at night show massive crowds and rapid fire gunshots. Videos surfacing from the daytime show hundreds of bodies lined up in partially unzipped black bags, as family members walk through the lines, looking for their loved ones.
Yasi, a protester who asked The New York Times to withhold her full name for safety, said, “The regime is on a killing spree.” Yasi joined a march on Friday night in Tehran with several friends, where she saw Iranian officers intercede and begin shooting. They shot a teenage boy in the leg, and Yasi heard his mother yell, “My son! My son! They shot my son!”
Other Tehran residents told The New York Times they’d seen snipers firing at crowds from rooftops, officers shooting people from cars as they drove by and enforcement officers opening fire with machine guns into crowds of young men and women.
‘Go and suppress by any means’
A physician who has since fled the country told the Center for Human Rights in Iran that the Islamic Republic’s reaction to the protests escalated significantly after they shut off the people’s internet access last Thursday.
After the blackout, “the nature of the injuries and the number of gunshot wounds had changed completely,” he said. “The situation was totally different. Shots from close range injuries leading to death. It was not possible for anyone to give an accurate death toll, whether one thousand, three thousand, or whatever.”
The doctor heard automatic gunfire and DShK heavy machine guns. People he knew said they saw “pickup trucks with mounted heavy machine guns driving through streets.”
“The trauma cases I saw were brutal, shoot-to-kill,” he said. The doctor performed “an extraordinary number” of emergency surgeries for severe head, chest and abdominal gunshot wounds.
The number of injured people arriving at the hospital where he worked quickly overwhelmed its facilities. “We call this a mass casualty,” he said. “Mass casualty means your resources cannot support the situation.”
In northern Tehran, a nurse working at Nikan Hospital told The New York Times that 19 gunshot victims came in at once. At another hospital, Shohada Hospital in northeast Tehran, another doctor told The New York Times they declared many protesters dead upon their arrival, having suffered close-range gunshot wounds to the head, neck, lungs and heart.