G7 threatens more sanctions for Iran amid ’high level of reported deaths and injuries’ - live

The UN security council is due to hold an emergency meeting to discuss Iran’s crackdown on protests, following a request by the United States. We’ll bring you more on that when it gets underway later, it’s expected around 3pm ET.

New Zealand’s foreign affairs minister has said he is “appalled by the escalation of violence and repression in Iran” and condemned the “brutal crackdown” by the security forces, “including the killing of protesters”.

In a post on X, Winston Peters said:

Iranians have the right to peaceful protest, freedom of expression, and access to information - and that right is currently being brutally repressed.

He continued to urge New Zealanders in Iran to leave now if safe to do so.

Pakistani students returning from Iran on Thursday said they heard gunshots and stories of rioting and violence while being confined to campus and not allowed out of their dormitories in the evening, reports Reuters.

Iran’s leadership is trying to quell the worst domestic unrest since its 1979 revolution. As the protests swell, Tehran is seeking to deter US President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to intervene on behalf of anti-government protesters.

Shahanshah, a student at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, said at the Islamabad airport:

During nighttime, we would sit inside and we would hear gunshots. The situation down there is that riots have been happening everywhere. People are dying. Force is being used.

Shahanshah told Reuters that students at the university were not allowed to leave campus and told to stay in their dormitories after 4pm.

“There was nothing happening on campus,” Shahanshah said, but in his interactions with Iranians, he heard stories of violence and chaos.

The surrounding areas, like banks, mosques, they were damaged, set on fire ... so things were really bad.

“We were not allowed to go out of the university,” said Arslan, a student in his final year. “The riots would mostly start later in the day.”

Arslan said he was unable to contact his family due to the blackout but “now that they opened international calls, the students are getting back because their parents were concerned”.

A Pakistani diplomat in Tehran said the embassy was getting calls from many of the 3,500 students in Iran to send messages to their families back home:

Since they don’t have internet connections to make WhatsApp and other social network calls, what they do is they contact the embassy from local phone numbers and tell us to inform their families.

Rimsha, who was in the middle of her final year exams at Isfahan, told Reuters that international students were kept safe:

Iranians would tell us if we are talking on Snapchat or if we were riding in a cab ... that shelling had happened, tear gas had happened, and that a lot of people were killed.

People inside the Iran, reached by Reuters on Wednesday and Thursday, said the protests appear to have abated since Monday. However, information flows have been hampered by an internet blackout for a week.

According to Reuters, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday the government was trying to address some of the economic problems that first spurred the protests, saying it intended to tackle issues of corruption and foreign exchange rates and that this would improve purchasing power for poorer people.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman led efforts to talk US President Donald Trump out of an attack on Iran, fearing “grave blowbacks in the region”, a senior Saudi official told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Thursday.

The Gulf trio “led a long, frantic, diplomatic last-minute effort to convince President Trump to give Iran a chance to show good intention”, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that dialogue was continuing.

Some personnel were moved out of a major US military base in Qatar on Wednesday, and staff at US missions in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were warned to exercise caution as fears mounted of a US attack over Iran’s crackdown on protesters.

The United States has repeatedly warned it could intervene against a deadly Iranian government crackdown on protests, while Tehran has said it would retaliate with strikes on US military and shipping targets.

Many US bases and assets are located in the Gulf.

But after several threats Trump changed course, saying he had received assurances from “very important sources on the other side” that Iran would not execute demonstrators.

The Gulf efforts aimed to “avoid an uncontrollable situation in the region”, the Saudi official said.

According to AFP, the official added:

We told Washington that an attack on Iran would open the way for a series of grave blowbacks in the region.

It was a sleepless night to defuse more bombs in the region... the communication is still underway to consolidate the gained trust and the current good spirit.

Another Gulf official said “the message conveyed to Iran has been that an attack on US facilities in the Gulf would have consequences on relations with countries in the region”.

Gripped by a terrible drought now entering its sixth year, Iran’s cities are on the brink of what its meteorological organisation calls “water day zero”: the boundary beyond which supply systems no longer function.

This was crossed by Chennai in India in summer 2019 and is now threatening Mashhad, Tabriz and Tehran, where taps in the city’s southern districts had already run dry by early December.

Nightly “pressure cuts”, in which the water supply is halted to whole districts in the capital, have become the norm. Protesters demanding “Water, electricity, life – our basic right” over the summer were already risking a clampdown.

According to the Middle East expert Juan Cole, the head of the regional water company reported in early November that the five main water supply dams to Tehran, the capital, were only 11% full, and criticised the government for its inaction.

Tehran, home to 10 million people, has been threatened with the most drastic measure of all – evacuation. “If it does not rain in Tehran by December we should ration water; if it still does not rain, we must empty Tehran,” the country’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said back in November.

Europe’s largest airline group said on Thursday that it would halt night flights to and from Tel Aviv and Amman for five days, citing security concerns as fears grow that unrest in Iran could spiral into wider regional violence.

Lufthansa, which operates Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings, said flights would run only during daytime hours from Thursday through Monday “due to the current situation in the Middle East”. It said the change would ensure its staff – which includes unionised cabin crews and pilots - would not be required to stay overnight in the region.

The airline group also said its planes would bypass Iranian and Iraqi airspace, key corridors for air travel between the Middle East and Asia.

US President Donald Trump has reacted to the news that Iran’s judiciary said, according to state media, that Erfan Soltani has not been sentenced to death (see 6.37am GMT).

Writing on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump appeared to reference a Fox News headline that attributed the US president’s warnings to Tehran as being behind the judiciary’s update. Trump wrote;

FoxNews: ‘Iranian protester will no longer be sentenced to death after President Trump’s warnings. Likewise others.’ This is good news. Hopefully, it will continue!

Iranian state media has denied claims that Soltani, arrested during Iran’s recent protests, was condemned to death.

The statement from Iran’s judicial authorities on Thursday contradicted what it said were “opposition media abroad” that had reported Soltani had been quickly sentenced to death during a violent crackdown on anti-government protests in the country.

Several Iranians living abroad told the Guardian that almost every person they knew was protesting on the streets and they were worried about whether they were still alive.

Sara Rasuli, 39, fled Iran after the Women, Life, Freedom protests of 2022 and is now a refugee in Germany. After finally speaking to her family still in Iran, she says she discovered that her cousin Ebrahim Yousefi, a 42-year-old Kurdish father of three, had been killed after being shot by security forces.

Hours before attending the protest, Yousefi had posted a message on his social media, saying:

We ourselves never had any luck, nor did our children … We grew up with war and hunger, our children with sanctions, power cuts, water shortage, and pollution … God, in the end, what will become of our children.

Rasuli says she received the news of his death when relatives contacted her after travelling to the Iraqi border.

“My cousin went out to fight for freedom and the rights of their people. He was kind and just the nicest person you would meet. The economy has worsened so much that even buying meat has become a luxury,” says Rasuli, who says one other cousin had been wounded and another arrested at a protest.

The last I know is that two of my relatives went to retrieve Yousefi’s body. Not only were they denied [the corpse], they were both arrested as well. We don’t have an update on anything else that’s happening to my family members due to the blackout.

She says:

The whole world needs to know what’s happening to the children of Iran, especially the Kurds [a sizeable ethnic minority in western Iran].

The families of Iranians killed by the regime in its crackdown on anti-government protests over the past week have told the Guardian of their devastation on learning of their relatives’ deaths.

More than 2,500 people have been killed so far, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, but the death toll is expected to rise substantially as the regime eases a communications blackout imposed since 8 January.

Iran has one of the largest diasporas in the world, many of whom fled the country after the Iranian revolution in 1979, and at least half a million live in Europe. But with the internet shut down, relatives based overseas have been slow to discover the fate of family members in Iran.

Hali Norei, 40, says she fell to her knees when she received a call telling her that her 23-year-old niece, Robina Aminian, had been killed by a shot to the head from behind after joining university friends at a protest in Tehran on 8 January. The news only came after relatives in Iran travelled to the Iraqi border to get enough of an internet connection to call abroad.

“It’s a tragedy for my family,” says Norei.

I don’t know what I can do for them, but I want to be Robina’s voice and don’t want this regime to silence the voices of our children.

Norei says her family in Iran had travelled to Tehran to identify Aminian and saw “hundreds of bodies of young people shot and killed”. She says they were then forced to take Aminian’s body surreptitiously after the authorities refused permission to take it home.

“Amene [Aminian’s mother], who is one of the bravest members of our family, wailed loudly, but was determined to bring her baby home,” Norei says.

She picked her up in her arms and was forced to steal her own child’s body; she drove back home with her on her lap.

But after leaving, Aminian’s family were followed home by the security forces, who remained stationed outside their house. After approaching several mosques, the family say they were denied a funeral ceremony and “forced to bury her along the road, digging the ground themselves to bury their child”, says Norei.

China’s foreign minister called for dialogue and restraint in resolving disputes in a phone call with his Iranian counterpart on Thursday, according to a readout released by China’s state-run news agency Xinhua, reports Reuters.

China opposed the use or threat of force in international relations, and believed that the Iranian government and people could overcome difficulties and safeguard national stability, Wang Yi told Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi.

According to Agence France-Presse (AFP) Araghchi said “he hoped China will play a greater role in regional peace and stability” during the talks, according to a statement from the ministry.

In his statement, Wang said:

China opposes imposing its will on other countries, and opposes a return to the ‘law of the jungle’.

China believes that the Iranian government and people will unite, overcome difficulties, maintain national stability, and safeguard their legitimate rights and interests.

China hopes all parties will cherish peace, exercise restraint, and resolve differences through dialogue. China is willing to play a constructive role in this regard.

Portugal on Thursday announced a “temporary” closure of its embassy in Tehran, citing a “context of tension”, and advised its nationals not to travel to Iran.

Portugal’s foreign ministry said in a statement that eight Portuguese citizens had already left Iran, and others were preparing to do the same. Another 10 Portuguese passport holders, including seven dual nationals, had decided to remain in the country, the ministry said, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The embassy closure was decided on Wednesday, a day after the government summoned Iran’s ambassador to lodge its protest against the violent repression of demonstrations against the regime, and to urge Tehran to respect the rights of Iranian citizens.

In a separate statement, posted on X, foreign minister Paulo Rangel said that Portugal was ready to join any concerted tightening of sanctions against Iran by the European Union.

New Zealand’s foreign minister Winston Peters said on Thursday that his government was “appalled by the escalation of violence and repression” in Iran.

Posting on X, Peters wrote:

We condemn the brutal crackdown being carried out by Iran’s security forces, including the killing of protesters.

Iranians have the right to peaceful protest, freedom of expression, and access to information – and that right is currently being brutally repressed.

Peters said his government had expressed serious concerns to the Iranian embassy in Wellington.

The Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, has written an analysis on why western diplomats are wary of predicting end days for Iran’s regime:

When asked to predict whether fissures are appearing at the top of the Iranian state that may imply Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s days as supreme leader are numbered, western diplomats adopt a haunted demeanour, perhaps recalling one of western diplomacy’s greatest collective disasters.

Before the fall of the Shah of Iran in January 1979, insouciant diplomats based in Tehran were sending cables to their capitals offering total reassurance that Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s hold on power was utterly secure. In September 1978, the US Defence Intelligence Agency, for instance, reported that “the shah is expected to remain actively in power over the next 10 years”. A state department report suggested “the shah would not have to stand down until 1985 at the earliest”.

Sir Anthony Parsons, then the UK ambassador in Tehran, sent a message to the Foreign Office dated May 1978 saying:

I do not believe there is a serious risk of an overthrow of the regime while the shah is at the helm.

Parsons later wrote an anguished book asking whether as British ambassador he could “have anticipated that the forces of opposition to the shah – the religious class, the bazaar, the students – would combine to destroy him”. He concluded that his inability to predict an event that he compared in import to the French Revolution was not due to a lack of information, but from a failure to interpret the information correctly.

The experience of 1979 means the intelligence assessments now coming out of western embassies will be starting with a caveat and probably ending with a question mark.

In contrast, academic experts on Iran do not see much indication today of the kind of mass defections from the regime that Reza Pahlavi, the former shah’s son, has been predicting. He recently claimed that 50,000 officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were preparing to desert, a claim he has since had to revise.

Additionally, Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan said that Turkey opposes a military operation against Iran.

Fidan told reporters in Istanbul:

We’re against a military operation against Iran. We believe the authentic problems of Iran should be resolved by themselves.

He claimed that Iran’s economic grievances were “misunderstood as an uprising against” the Islamic Republic.

Turkey’s top diplomat on Thursday called for dialogue to the crisis in Iran.

“We absolutely want problems to be resolved through dialogue,” foreign minister Hakan Fidan told journalists in Istanbul.

According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), Fidan said:

Hopefully, the United States and Iran will resolve this issue among themselves - whether through mediators, other actors, or direct dialogue.

We are closely following these developments.

Germany’s air traffic control authority said Thursday it was recommending planes avoid Iranian airspace after the United States has in recent days warned of a possible military intervention in Iran.

A spokesperson for Germany’s flight safety office told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in a statement it had issued a recommendation “that Iranian airspace not be overflown … until 10 February,” adding that the advice had been issued “on the instruction of the transport ministry”.

In the most recent episode of Today in Focus: The Latest, Lucy Hough speaks to journalist Deepa Parent about what she is hearing from those inside Iran. You can watch and listen here:

Iran closed its airspace to commercial flights for hours without explanation early on Thursday as tensions remained high with the United States over Tehran’s crackdown on nationwide protests.

The closure ran for more than four hours, according to pilot guidance issued by Iran, which lies on a key east-west flight route. International carriers diverted north and south around Iran, but after one extension, the closure appeared to have expired and several domestic flights were in the air just after 7am, reports the Associated Press (AP).

Around midday, Iranian state television carried a statement from the country’s Civil Aviation Authority saying that the nation’s “skies are hosting incoming and outgoing flights, and airports are providing services to passengers.” It did not acknowledge the closure.

A bit more detail on the news that Erfan Soltani has not been sentenced to death, as we reported earlier (see 6.37am GMT).

The Iranian judiciary said on Thursday that Soltani has “not been sentenced to death” and if he is convicted, “the punishment, according to the law, will be imprisonment, as the death penalty does not exist for such charges”.

Soltani is imprisoned in Karaj outside Tehran after his arrest and is facing charges of propaganda against Iran’s Islamic system and acting against national security, the judiciary said in a statement carried by state TV.

French President Emmanuel Macron convened an emergency defence cabinet in Paris on Thursday to discuss US President Donald’s Trump’s stated intent to acquire Greenland and the forceful crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran.

The crisis meeting, confirmed by a French official, was scheduled to begin at 7am GMT, reports Reuters.

More on Erfan Soltani: the 26-year-old Iranian man arrested on 10 January during Iran’s protests has not been sentenced to death, the country’s judiciary was quoted by state media as saying on Thursday.

The judiciary said Soltani was being charged with “colluding against the country’s internal security and propaganda activities against the regime” but that the death penalty did not apply to such charges if they were confirmed by a court, Reuters has just reported.

Soltani is being held in the central penitentiary of Karaj, the report said.

Tensions between the US and Iran appear to have eased as Donald Trump adopted a more measured tone towards Tehran and suggested a pause in his decision on threatened US military action.

As you can read in our fresh full report, Trump had spoken repeatedly in recent days about coming to the aid of the Iranian people over the ruling regime’s crackdown on protests that a human rights group says has now killed at least 3,428 people and led to the arrest of more than 10,000.

But as mentioned earlier, Trump said in a surprise announcement at the White House that he had received assurances from “very important sources on the other side” that Tehran had now stopped the use of lethal force on protesters and that executions would not go ahead.

Asked if US military action was now off the table, Trump responded: “We’re going to watch it and see what the process is.”

You can read the full report here:

Moving for a moment to Australia, protesters have staged a rally outside the Iranian embassy in Canberra to demand regime change in Iran.

About 100 demonstrators chanted “democracy for Iran” and “King Reza Pahlavi”, a reference to the last Iranian shah’s exiled son – a key figure in the anti-government protests.

James Younessi, a Sydney doctor who spoke at the demonstration, said he would happily move back to his home country if the regime was overthrown, Australian Associated Press has reported.

But he was hesitant about more American intervention in the Middle East, saying:

I don’t want Iran to be indentured to any foreign nation the moment anybody interferes. But if it means saving one life for it, we want a measured response that we can have this bloodshed ended.

Another protester, Omid Fakhri, who hadn’t heard from his family in Iran because of the internet blackout, was more positive about US military action.

“We don’t care which military, just a military is fine, as long as they can go in and stop the massacre,” he said.

Foreign minister Penny Wong said Australia continued to urge people not to travel to Iran, and warned the security situation could deteriorate rapidly.

A little more now on Iran’s reopening of its airspace to flights after a near-five-hour closure that forced airlines to cancel, reroute or delay some flights.

Iran closed its airspace to all flights except international ones to and from Iran with official permission at 10.15pm GMT on Wednesday, according to a notice on the US Federal Aviation Administration website.

The notice was removed shortly before 3am GMT, according to tracking service Flightradar24, which showed five flights from Iranian carriers Mahan Air, Yazd Airways and AVA Airlines were among the first to resume over the country.