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

By Parisa Hafezi and Nayera Abdallah

Dubai, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Iran’s deadly 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 U.S. threats to intervene if killing continues.

After President Donald Trump’s repeated threats of military action against Iran in support of protesters, fears of a U.S. attack have retreated since Wednesday, when Trump said he’d been told killings in the crackdown were easing.

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

The White House said on Thursday that Trump is closely monitoring the situation on the ground, adding that the president and his team have warned Tehran there would be “grave consequences” if killings linked to its crackdown continue.

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”.

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.

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’d seen no sign of protests on Thursday or Friday. 

Iranian-Kurdish rights group Hengaw said that there had been no protest gatherings since Sunday, saying “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 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, where many Kurdish Iranians live and which has been the focus for many of the biggest flare-ups, said sporadic protests had continued, though not as intensely.

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

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

A death toll reported by U.S.-based rights group HRANA has increased little since Wednesday, currently standing at 2,677 people, including 2,478 protesters and 163 people identified as people affiliated with the government.

Reuters has not been able to independently verify the HRANA death toll. An Iranian official told the news agency earlier this week that about 2,000 people had been killed in the unrest.

The casualty numbers dwarf the death toll from previous bouts of unrest that have been suppressed by the state.

Iranian authorities have described the unrest as the most violent yet, accusing foreign enemies of fomenting it and armed people they have identified as terrorists of targeting security forces and carrying out other attacks.

The state-affiliated Tasnim news outlet reported what it described as the arrest of a large number of leaders of recent riots in the western province of Kermanshah. 

Tasnim also reported 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.

Also on Friday, state television broadcast the funerals of members of the security forces in Semnan, northern Iran, and Semirom, central Iran.

(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi, Nayera Abdallah and Jana Choukeir in Dubai; Writing by Tom Perry; editing by Sharon Singleton)