Iran has warned it will retaliate if attacked by the US, as protesters defied a deadly government crackdown on Saturday night.
Videos verified by the BBC and eyewitness accounts appeared to show the government ramping up its response to the protests, which have spread to more than 100 cities and towns across every province in Iran.
Medics at two hospitals have told the BBC that more than 100 bodies had been brought in over a two day period. The nationwide death toll is feared to be far higher.
The US has threatened to strike Iran over the killing of protesters. Iran’s parliament speaker warned that if the US attacked, Israel along with 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.
US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the US “stands ready to help” as Iran “is looking at FREEDOM”.
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.
As protests intensify, the number of deaths and injuries recorded by human rights monitors continues to rise.
Footage authenticated by BBC Persian and BBC Verify shows security officers shooting at gatherings of protesters in Tehran, in the western Kermanshah province and the southern Bushehr region.
Multiple verified videos filmed in the centre of the western city of Ilam last weekend show security forces firing shots towards Imam Khomeini Hospital, where a group of protesters had been holding a rally.
Staff at several hospitals have since told the BBC they have been overwhelmed with the injured and dead.
BBC Persian has verified that 70 bodies brought to one hospital in the city of Rasht on Friday night, while a health worker reported around 38 people dying at a Tehran hospital.
Sources inside Iran have told BBC Persian that plain-clothes officers have been targeting people filming and on their own at the protests.
Iran’s police chief said on state TV that the level of confrontation with protesters had been stepped up, with arrests on Saturday night of what he called “key figures”. He blamed a “significant proportion of fatalities” on “trained and directed individuals”, not security forces, but did not give specific details.
More than 2,500 people have been arrested since protests began on 28 December, according to a human rights group.
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.
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, while a row of security forces is seen in the distance. A vehicle that appears to be a bus is engulfed in flames.
Multiple gunshots and what sounds like banging on pots and pans can be heard.
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 also taking over the streets in the Gisha district.
Other verified videos from the capital show a large group of protesters and the sound of banging on pots in Punak Square, and a crowd of protesters marching on a road and calling for the end of the clerical establishment in the Heravi district.
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.
US ‘ready to help’
Trump did not elaborate on what the US was considering. However, he has been briefed on options for military strikes on Iran, an official told the BBC’s US news partner CBS.
The Wall Street Journal reports these were “preliminary discussions” and that there was no “imminent threat” to Iran.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday about the possibility of US intervention in Iran, they told CBS.
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.
UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said those speaking out against Khamenei’s government should not face “the threat of violence or reprisals”.
At least 162 protesters and 41 security personnel have been killed in the past two weeks, US-based Human Rights Activists in Iran said.
Norway-based Iran Human Rights reported at least 192 protesters have been killed.
The group’s director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said: “The killing of protesters over the past three days, particularly following the nationwide internet shutdown, may be even more extensive than we currently imagine.”
BBC Persian has confirmed the identities of 26 people killed, including six children.
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.
Source: BBC
