Iran’s foreign minister calls Trump’s threat to intervene in protests ‘reckless’

Iran’s foreign minister calls Donald Trump’s intervention pledge ‘reckless and dangerous’ U.S. President warns Iranian authorities objected to the killing of peaceful protesters and said Washington “will come to the rescue.”

“We are locked, loaded and ready to go,” Trump wrote in a brief social media post, without giving further details.

“Given President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard within the United States, he should know that criminal attacks on public property will not be tolerated,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote in a statement to X.

He added that Iran would “firmly reject any interference in its internal affairs.”

Meanwhile, an Iranian police spokesman said police would not allow what he called “enemies” to turn “riots into chaos.”

exist at least eight people As of Saturday morning, one person had been reported dead during the week-long protests in Tehran.

Clashes between protesters and security forces in the southwestern city of Lodgan left two people dead, the semi-official Fars news agency and human rights group Hengaw reported. The group described them as protesters and identified them as Ahmed Jalil and Sajjad Varamanesh.

Fars reported three deaths in Azna and one in Kudasht, both in the west of the country. It did not specify whether they were demonstrators or members of the security forces.

According to reports, one death was reported in the city of Fuladshahr in central Iran and one death was reported in the city of Mafdasht in the south.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify the deaths.

Protests have spread to many towns and cities, with reports of ongoing fighting between security forces and demonstrators.

The protests began in Tehran, where shopkeepers were angry that Iran’s currency had fallen sharply against the U.S. dollar again on the open market.

By Tuesday, university students were participating and it had spread to several cities, with people chanting against the country’s religious rulers.

The demonstrations were the most widespread since the 2022 uprising sparked by the death in custody of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, who was accused by morality police of not wearing her hijab properly, but they were not of the same scale.

President Masoud Pezeshkian said he would listen to the protesters’ “legitimate demands.”

But the country’s Attorney General, Mohamed Mowahdi-Azad, warned that any attempt to create instability would be met with a “decisive response.”

According to Reuters, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations Amir Saeed Irawani called on the Security Council to condemn Trump’s remarks in a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council on Friday.

“Iran will exercise its rights decisively and appropriately. The United States of America takes full responsibility for any consequences of these unlawful threats and any subsequent escalation,” he said in the letter.