Iran warns it will retaliate if US attacks as protesters defy crackdown

Iran has warned it will retaliate if attacked by the US, as reports from BBC sources suggest several hundred protesters have now been killed and hundreds more injured.

Demonstrators again defied a deadly crackdown on Saturday night, and Iran’s police chief said on state TV that the government’s response had intensified.

Medics at two hospitals told the BBC that more than 100 bodies were brought in over a two-day period. The nationwide death toll is feared to be far higher. The US-based Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) says it has verified the deaths of 490 protesters and 48 security personnel.

Another 10,600 people have been detained during the two weeks of unrest, the agency says.

The US has threatened to strike Iran over the killing of protesters, and President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the US “stands ready to help” as Iran “is looking at FREEDOM”.

Trump did not elaborate on what the US was considering. He has been briefed on options for military strikes on Iran, an official told the BBC’s US news partner CBS.

Other approaches could include boosting anti-government sources online, using cyber-weapons against Iran’s military, imposing more sanctions, officials told the Wall Street Journal.

Iran’s parliament speaker warned that if the US attacked, both Israel and US military and shipping centres in the region would become legitimate targets.

The protests were sparked in the capital, Tehran, by soaring inflation, and are now calling for an end to the clerical rule of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran’s attorney general said anyone protesting would be considered an “enemy of God” – an offence that carries the death penalty – while Khamenei has dismissed demonstrators as a “bunch of vandals” seeking to “please” Trump.

Staff at several hospitals have told the BBC they have been overwhelmed with the injured and dead in recent days.

BBC Persian has verified that 70 bodies were brought to one hospital in the city of Rasht on Friday night, while a health worker at a Tehran hospital told the BBC: “Around 38 people died. Many as soon as they reached the emergency beds… direct shots to the heads of the young people, to their hearts as well. Many of them didn’t even make it to the hospital.”

Sources inside Iran have told BBC Persian that plain-clothes officers have been targeting people filming and on their own at the protests.

The BBC and most other international news organisations are unable to report from inside Iran, and the Iranian government has imposed an internet shutdown since Thursday, making obtaining and verifying information difficult.

Nonetheless, some footage has emerged, including video showing rows of body bags in the Kahrizak area of Tehran. Images seen by the BBC show about 182 shrouded or wrapped bodies, many lying out in the open.

Several videos confirmed as recent by BBC Verify show clashes between protesters and security forces in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city.

Masked protesters can be seen taking cover behind bins and bonfires, with a row of security forces in the distance. A vehicle that appears to be a bus is engulfed in flames.

Multiple gunshots can be heard, and what sounds like banging on pots and pans.

A figure standing on a nearby footbridge appears to fire multiple gunshots in several directions as a couple of people take cover behind a fence.

In Tehran, a verified video from Saturday night shows protesters taking over the streets in the Gisha district, the sound of banging on pots in Punak Square, and a crowd marching and calling for the end of clerical rule in the Heravi district.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has blamed the US and Israel for the unrest.

“They have trained certain individuals inside the country and abroad, brought terrorists into the country from outside, set mosques on fire, and attacked markets and guilds in Rasht, setting the bazaar ablaze,” he said without providing evidence.

However, footage authenticated by BBC Persian and BBC Verify shows security officers shooting at gatherings of protesters in several areas. They include Tehran, the western Kermanshah province, and the southern Bushehr region.

Multiple verified videos filmed in the centre of the western city of Ilam last weekend also show security forces firing shots towards Imam Khomeini Hospital, where a group of protesters were holding a rally.

Internet access in Iran is largely limited to a domestic intranet, with restricted links to the outside world. But during the current round of protests, authorities have for the first time severely restricted that too.

An expert told BBC Persian the shutdown is more severe than during the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising in 2022.

Alireza Manafi, an internet researcher, said the only likely way to connect to the outside world was via Starlink satellite, but warned users to exercise caution as such connections could potentially be traced by the government.

On Sunday, Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah, who lives in the US and whose return protesters have been calling for, told demonstrators that Trump had “carefully observed your indescribable bravery” in a social media post.

“Your compatriots around the world are proudly shouting your voice,” he wrote, pledging: “I know that I will soon be by your side.”

Pahlavi claimed the Islamic Republic was facing a “severe shortage of mercenaries” and that “many armed and security forces have left their workplaces or disobeyed orders to suppress the people”. The BBC could not verify these claims.

He encouraged people to continue protesting on Sunday evening, but to stay in groups or with crowds and not “endanger your lives”.

Amnesty International said it was analysing “distressing reports that security forces had intensified their unlawful use of lethal force against protesters” since Thursday.

The protests have been the most widespread since an uprising in 2022 sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman who was detained by morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly.

More than 550 people were killed and 20,000 detained by security forces over several months, according to human rights groups.

Additional reporting by Soroush Pakzad, Roja Assadi and Ghoncheh Habibiazad