Iran crisis live: Trump says killers of protesters will ‘pay a big price’ and urges Iranians to ‘take over your institutions’

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is offering people in Iran free internet through Starlink’s satellite service, according to Bloomberg News, as the internet blackout in the country surpassed the five-day mark.

The subscription fee has been waived so that people with receivers in Iran can access service without paying, according to Bloomberg’s report.

Donald Trump gave a speech on affordability at the Economic Club in Detroit on Tuesday, where he repeated his earlier comments on Iran.

The US president said: “I’ve canceled all meetings with the Iranian officials, until the senseless killing of protesters stops.”

In the past Trump has threatened the Iranian military with strikes as a means of getting Tehran into greater alignment with the US demands. He also announced on Monday that any country that does business with Iran will be subjected to a 25 percent tariff.

Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff met in secret with Reza Pahlavi last weekend, Axios reports. Pahlavi is the son of Iran’s last shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and left Iran before his father was forced out in 1978, living mainly in Los Angeles and Washington DC since then.

In previous messages that have been blocked by the Iranian government internet shutdown, he has said that he is ready to lead a transition. He has also pushed for a referendum and nonviolent change in the country.

The exiled prince has welcomed the fact that Iran could become a constitutional monarchy with an elected ruler, instead of a hereditary one. In a post on X in June last year, he wrote: “There is only one way to achieve peace: a secular, democratic Iran. I am here today to submit myself to my compatriots to lead them down this road to peace and a democratic transition.”

There have been no details published about the weekend’s meeting between Pahlavi and Witkoff.

While travelling, Trump addressed his earlier social media post that claimed “help is on the way”. When asked what he meant by this he responded: “You’re going to have to figure that one out. I’m sorry,” according to Axios.

We already know Trump is considering how to apply pressure on the Iranian regime following its deadly crackdown on protesters. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday that airstrikes were among the “many, many options” being considered but that “diplomacy is always the first option for the president”.

There are reports that one of the many thousands of protesters arrested last week, Erfan Soltani, is facing imminent execution after being tried, convicted and sentenced since his arrest last Thursday.

The 26-year-old was arrested in Karaj, a city just on the north-west outskirts of Tehran, at the peak of the protests before the internet black-out.

The BBC’s Persian language service has spoken to one of his relatives who said: “within just two days, the court issued a death sentence, and the family was told that he is due to be executed on Wednesday”.

Amnesty International has highlighted his case, warning of concerns that Iranian authorities might “once again resort to swift trials and arbitrary executions to crush and deter dissent”.

AFP reports that Iranian prosecutors today said they would be charging some protesters, whom they called “rioters”, with offences punishable by death.

Iran is the world’s most prolific executioner after China, according to monitors. Last year, it hanged at least 1,500 people, Norway-based Iran Human Rights group said.

US broadcaster CBS now is also reporting a death toll of at least 12,000 people in Iran, potentially as high as 20,000.

CBS says it’s received that number from two sources within Iran through phone calls. Those sources have cited the number being given by activist groups on the ground tallying medical records from hospitals.

The Iranian regime has not provided any official numbers. Reuters news agency cited an unnamed official today saying about 2,000 people had been killed in the past fortnight of protests.

The US House Foreign Affairs Committee has also pushed out a strong message on X following Trump’s missive earlier. The tone from US officials has escalated.

“To the Iranian people: Ayatollah Khamanei has butchered your people, made rial the weakest currency in the world, and squandered your country’s resources.

“Make regime change inevitable.”

We are getting more reports of a casualty number in the several thousands – far more than that of any other round of protest or unrest in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

At least 2,000 people have been killed – 1,850 of them being protesters - says the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency – which has tracked Iran protests for more than 20 years. Yesterday the group had said it had only so far identified about 500 casualties. It adds that more than 16,000 protesters have been arrested.

Meanwhile, Iran International has concluded that 12,000 people were killed at protests on 8 and 9 January.

The Persian-language television news channel is based in the UK and has been linked to the Saudi government. It’s based its count on sources in the country and medical data.

Based on available data and cross-checking information obtained from reliable sources, including the Supreme National Security Council and the presidential office, the initial estimate by the Islamic Republic’s security institutions is that at least 12,000 people were killed in this nationwide killing.”

France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK, Finland and Denmark have all announced this afternoon that they have summoned Iran’s respective ambassadors in their countries to their foreign ministries to formally object to the killings.

The German foreign ministry said: “The Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown on its own population is shocking,” while France’s foreign minister called it “state violence unquestioningly unleashed on peaceful protesters”.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said: “We have summoned the Iranian ambassador in Spain to express our rejection of the violence against demonstrators and to urge respect for the fundamental rights of Iranians.”

Further sanctions against Iran “will target finance, energy, transport, software and other significant industries”, Yvette Cooper has said.

The UK’s foreign secretary said she previously told leaders in Tehran that it would “take time to fully implement the UK sanctions, and during that window, they should start compliance and engagement with the international community and end the deception and obfuscation”.

She added: “Weapons inspectors still have not been given access, and far from changing their approach, we have seen instead a reversion to the most brutal forms of repression on their own streets.

“As a result, I can confirm the UK will bring forward legislation to implement full and further sanctions and sectoral measures.

“The UK has already designated key players in Iran’s oil, energy, nuclear and financial systems.”

She told parliament she had also summoned the Iranian ambassador, after speaking to Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi yesterday.

In a post to Truth Social, the US president, Donald Trump, has said:

Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

It is not clear what Trump means by “help is on its way” but the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told journalists yesterday that airstrikes were among the “many, many options” that the president was considering, though she added that diplomacy “was always the first option”.

The UK’s foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, has condemned the Iranian leadership for the “horrendous and brutal killing” of protesters, and said the government had summoned the Iranian ambassador to underline the gravity of the situation.

She called Iran’s crackdown on anti-government protesters the “most brutal and bloody repression against public protests in Iran for at least 13 years”.

Addressing MPs in the House of Commons in London, Cooper said:

I am fearful that the reports that we have seen may underestimate the full scale of the horror as further evidence and testimony reaches the outside world.

Videos are still emerging, including of what appear to be protester corpses lined up in body bags outside a hospital in the outskirts of Tehran.

The Iranian regime has called for a three-day period of national mourning but only for its security forces. No acknowledgment of dead protesters.

Instead, the regime peddles its manufactured narrative of foreign manipulation and seeks to portray peaceful protesters as criminals and terrorists, all the while pursuing a brutal and relentless crackdown on its own people.

You can watch the foreign secretary’s address live here:

Iran has been ruled by autocrats since 1979. For the past two decades, there has been wave after wave of protests – often led by students – calling for regime change.

Significant moments include a public outcry over the disputed 2009 presidential election and the crackdown on the 2022-23 “Woman, life, freedom” movement that was sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab the wrong way.

Anti-government observers say the protests are growing in size and concentration, but it is difficult to verify those claims without independent observers on the ground.

One noteworthy aspect of this year’s protests has been references to Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s deposed ​shah. Videos have shown crowds calling for the return of the shah​, who is based in the US, although it is unclear how widespread the support is for the former monarchy.

You can read more in this explainer by my colleagues Maheen Sadiq, Arnel Hecimovic, Lucy Swan and Oliver Holmes here:

Some more on these numbers we’re getting on the death toll – it is becoming increasingly clear that most likely, several thousand people have been killed in the protests.

Reuters has spoken to an Iranian government official who says about 2,000 people, including security personnel, have been killed in the unrest - one of the first acknowledgements from authorities of the high death toll.

And while several rights groups say they’ve identified by name hundreds of the killed– the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR) said it had confirmed 648 people, including nine minors, it’s also warned the last two days that the death toll was likely much higher – “according to some estimates more than 6,000”.

The UN’s human right’s office said this morning it believed hundreds had been killed. It does not have a presence in Iran but said it was receiving reliable information from sources on the ground.

The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said the bloc will “swiftly” propose further sanctions on those responsible for the “repression” of demonstrations in Iran.

“The rising number of casualties in Iran is horrifying. I unequivocally condemn the excessive use of force and continued restriction of freedom,” she wrote in a post on X.

“The European Union has already listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in its entirety under its human rights sanctions regime.”

The EU has already adopted a wide-ranging set of sanctions against Iran, mainly in the form of travel bans and asset freezes.

Commenting on the protests, the UN high commissioner for human rights Volker Türk said:

This cycle of horrific violence cannot continue. The Iranian people and their demands for fairness, equality and justice must be heard.

“The killing of peaceful demonstrators must stop, and the labelling of protesters as ‘terrorists’ to justify violence against them is unacceptable,” Türk said.

It also was “extremely worrying” to hear some public statements from judicial officials mentioning the prospect of the use of the death penalty against protesters through expedited judicial proceedings, Türk added.

Asked to comment on the scale of the death toll, the UN rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence drew on information given by the UN’s sources in Iran and told reporters: “The number that we’re hearing is hundreds.”

About 2,000 people, including security personnel, have been killed in the protests in Iran, an Iranian official has told the Reuters news agency. We have not been able to independently verify this figure yet. It is difficult to do so because of the ongoing internet blackout in Iran. The official did not give a breakdown of who had been killed to Reuters.

The protests, which began in Tehran on 28 December, were triggered by the collapse of the Iranian currency – the rial - and soon morphed into nationwide anti-regime demonstrations with people also angry at social and political restrictions imposed by the government.

As my colleague William Christou notes in this story, the currency has continued to depreciate, while the government announced the end of a subsidised exchange rate for importers – a move that caused the price of groceries to soar.

In September, widespread UN sanctions against Iran came back into effect for the first time in a decade after being triggered by the UK, France and Germany (the ‘E3’) as Tehran failed to convince western powers it would address their concerns over its nuclear programme.

They were are a “snapback” of measures frozen in 2015 when Iran agreed to major restrictions on its nuclear programme under a deal negotiated by the former US president Barack Obama.

Iran was already under huge economic strain caused by US sanctions that cut the country off from global finance.

International sanctions have played a major role in worsening economic conditions for ordinary Iranians who are having to contend with high inflation, soaring prices and a huge devaluation of the rial.

Iran’s economic crisis worsened again after Israel and the US launched strikes last June in a 12-day war that targeted several of the country’s nuclear sites.

The US virtual embassy in Iran has urged for US citizens to get out of the country “now” (if possible) and to have a plan for leaving that does not “rely” on US government help.

In a security alert published on Tuesday, the embassy said:

Protests across Iran are escalating and may turn violent, resulting in arrests and injuries. Increased security measures, road closures, public transportation disruptions, and internet blockages are ongoing.

The government of Iran has restricted access to mobile, landline, and national internet networks. Airlines continue to limit or cancel flights to and from Iran, with several suspending service until Friday, January 16.

It recommends for US citizens to avoid demonstrations, “keep a low profile” and, if it is safe to do so, consider leaving Iran “by land” to Armenia or Turkey.

If leaving is impossible, the virtual embassy said people should find a “secure location” within their residence or another safe building, and keep a supply of essential items including food, water and medication.

Iran’s internet shutdown has passed the 108-hour mark, according to an update from the internet tracking agency NetBlocks posted about four hours ago.

The tracking agency has said the blackout, which has seriously hampered the media’s ability to report on what is going on inside of Iran, could be circumvented with shortwave radio, connecting to cell coverage at borders, Starlink and satellite phones.

For the first time in days Iranian authorities allowed members of the public to make phone calls abroad, the Associated Press reported this morning. But there are still restrictions on the internet and texting services have reportedly not been restored.

More than 90 million people have been cut off from the internet since the demonstrations in Iran began, according to the human rights organisation Witness.

We are restarting our live coverage of the ongoing anti-government protests in Iran which are widely seen as the most serious challenge to the country’s Islamic Republic in recent years.

At least 648 protesters have been killed in the ongoing crackdown, according to the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights. Thousands more people have been injured since the demonstrations started on 28 December over the collapse of the Iranian currency and general economic malaise.

Speaking while on a diplomatic visit to India earlier today, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he believes the Iranian government is in its “final days and weeks”, adding that the regime lacks “legitimacy through elections in the population”.

“If a regime can only keep itself in power by force, then it’s effectively at the end,” Merz said.

The Iranian regime has been condemned by many world leaders for its harsh crackdown including mass arrests, internet blackouts and public warnings that participation in the demonstrations could carry the death penalty.

On Tuesday morning, the Associated Press reported mobile phones in Iran were able to make international calls, although restrictions on the internet reportedly remain in place.

Meanwhile, the US president, Donald Trump, has said any country that does business with Iran will face a tariff rate of 25% on trade with the US.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters on Monday that airstrikes were among the “many, many options” that Trump was considering but that “diplomacy is always the first option for the president”. Trump’s national security team is expected to meet later to discuss options. Stick with us as we bring you the latest lines.