The nationwide protests that rocked Iran for days appeared to be smothered Thursday, after the regime sealed the country off from the outside world and unleashed a sweeping crackdown that activists say killed thousands — a campaign Tehran now claims is winding down.
In Tehran, witnesses described a city that looked markedly calmer than earlier in the week. Bonfires that had lit the night sky were gone by morning, debris had been cleared from major streets and the crackle of gunfire that had echoed for several nights had faded.
State media, meanwhile, announced wave after wave of arrests, targeting alleged “terrorists” and hunting for Starlink satellite internet dishes — one of the few remaining ways to get images of the unrest out of the country.
“Since January 8, we saw a full-fledged war and anybody who was in the gathering since then is a criminal,” Justice Minister Amin Hossein Rahimi said Wednesday, according to the judiciary’s Mizan news agency.
Yet even as authorities projected control, there were signs that the regime was stepping back from its most severe threats. Iranian state media reported Thursday that Essam Soltani, a 26-year-old protester who rights groups said was slated for execution, would not face the death penalty. Officials said the charges against him — collusion against internal security and propaganda against the regime — do not carry capital punishment if upheld by a court.
The apparent pause was echoed by senior Iranian officials and seized upon by Washington. President Donald Trump said Wednesday he had been told that killings during the crackdown were subsiding and that executions would not go forward. He echoed that in a social media post Thursday morning.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Fox News there was “no plan” to hang protesters “today or tomorrow,” adding flatly: “Hanging is out of the question.”
Those comments came after days of intense speculation over whether Trump would follow through on threats to strike Iran over the killings, with Western officials warning that U.S. military action could be imminent. According to NBC News, Trump was briefed on a range of military options but insisted that any action would need to be “definitive” — delivering a swift blow without triggering a drawn-out regional war.
The shifting signals appeared to ease immediate fears of a strike. Iran briefly closed its airspace overnight Wednesday, forcing international carriers to divert around the country, before reopening it Thursday morning. Oil prices fell on signs that tensions might be cooling, while gold retreated from record highs.
Even so, the region remained on edge. Iran warned neighbors it would target U.S. bases if attacked, and the United States began drawing down some personnel from facilities in the Gulf. Qatar confirmed adjustments at Al Udeid Air Base, the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, citing heightened regional tensions.
Inside Iran, hard-line voices were still calling for swift punishment. Judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said earlier this week that authorities should move quickly to prosecute more than 18,000 detainees through rapid trials and executions. “If we want to do something, we have to do that fast,” he said in remarks aired on state television.
Human rights groups say the scale of the crackdown remains difficult to verify after a days-long internet shutdown. Estimates of the death toll range from fewer than 3,000 to more than 12,000, with Iran and its Western adversaries alike calling the unrest the most violent since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Diplomatic efforts intensified as uncertainty lingered. The UN Security Council convened an emergency meeting Thursday at Washington’s request. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan spoke with Araghchi about regional stability, while Turkey’s top diplomat urged dialogue to defuse the crisis.
Trump, for his part, suggested the protests could still threaten the regime’s survival — but stopped short of predicting its fall. “Any regime can fail,” he said. “Whether or not it falls or not, it’s going to be an interesting period of time.”
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TACO – and Trump does have a warm spot in his heart for authoritarians who are willing to make “deals” (so a democratic Iran trying to rebuild their economy is not what Trump prefers).