Iran protests rage for another night and deaths rise as Trump repeats warning of possible US intervention

Demonstrations in Iran Protests raged Friday night in the Islamic Republic, online videos showed, despite threats from the country’s theocracy to crack down on demonstrators after shutting down the internet and cutting phone lines to the world. THE demonstrators appears to be emboldened by repeated statements of support from the Trump administration and the country’s exiled crown prince, who on Saturday called on them to try to overwhelm security forces and seize cities and towns.

An external rights group that relies on information from contacts in Iran says at least 65 people have been killed during the protests, which started in Tehran at the end of December as anger at Iran’s ailing economy, but quickly spread and morphed into the most significant challenge to the government in years.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused President Trump of having his hands “stained with the blood of Iranians” in remarks broadcast Friday on Iranian state television, as his supporters gathered in front of him shouted “Death to America!”

Protesters are “destroying their own streets… in order to please the president of the United States,” Khamenei, 86, told the crowd gathered at his Tehran compound. “Because he said he would help them. He should instead pay attention to the state of his own country.”

State media then labeled the protesters “terrorists”, setting the stage for a possible violent crackdown – as Iran has responded to other major protests in recent years, despite Mr Trump’s pledge to support peaceful demonstrators, with force if necessary.

Trump issues new warnings to Iranian leaders

Trump has repeatedly vowed to strike Iran if protesters are killed, a threat that took on even greater significance after the U.S. military raid that captured former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The president suggested Friday that any possible U.S. strike would “not mean troops on the ground, but it would mean hitting them very, very hard where it hurts.”

“Iran is in big trouble,” Trump said. “It seems to me that people are taking over some cities that no one really thought were possible a few weeks ago.”

He added: “I tell the Iranian leaders that they better not start shooting because we will start shooting too.”

In a brief social media message posted very early Saturday morning in Washington, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “the United States stands with the courageous people of Iran.”

Iranian regime warns protesters will be punished ‘without any legal leniency’

The head of Iran’s judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, said separately that sanctions against protesters “would be decisive, maximum and without any legal leniency.”

According to the Washington DC-based news agency Human Rights Activists News, founded by anti-regime activists, on Friday, the 13th day of unrest in Iran, at least 65 people were killed, including at least 14 members of the security forces. More than 2,300 people were arrested and protests were recorded in at least 180 cities.

Iranian authorities shut down the internet Thursday evening as protests sharply intensified, apparently because people responded to a call by the exiled crown prince, a vocal opposition figure, for Iranians to raise their voices against the regime.

According to an update posted online Saturday morning by the watchdog NetBlocks“Measurements show the nationwide internet blackout remains in effect for 36 hours, significantly limiting Iranians’ ability to check on the safety of their friends and loved ones.”

This communications breakdown has made it extremely difficult to establish a clear picture of the scale of the protests as a whole – and the Iranian authorities’ response to them. Other reports put the death toll much higher, with TIME quoting a Tehran doctor as saying that at least 217 people had been killed.

Iranian authorities have acknowledged some deaths, but generally only those of security forces.

Asked by CBS News how seriously he believes Iran’s autocratic leaders are taking Mr. Trump’s warnings not to kill protesters, Maziar Bahari, editor-in-chief of the IranWire news site, said he was sure it had “really scared a lot of Iranian officials and could have affected their actions in terms of how they confront the protesters.”

“But at the same time… it has prompted many protesters to come out, because they know that the leader of the world’s main superpower supports their cause,” said Bahari, who spent months in Iranian prisons after being arrested during a previous round of mass unrest in 2009.

“A lot of people have called what’s happening in Iran right now a revolution,” Bahari told CBS News’ Haley Ott. “And we can see different signs of revolution in Iran at the movement level. But a revolution usually needs a leader for the revolution. But we don’t have that leader.”

But while decades of draconian control over the media and deliberate sidelining of dissenting voices at home have deprived Iran of a clear opposition figurehead within the country’s borders, many in Iran’s vast diaspora are hoping the country’s deposed royal family could stage a comeback.

Exiled Iranian royal head predicts return ‘very close’

Exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi is seen by many analysts as a galvanizing force behind the momentum behind this series of protests. On Saturday, he called on Iranians not only to continue taking to the streets, but also to try to take control of cities from the authorities by crushing them..

“Our goal is no longer just to take to the streets. The goal is to prepare to capture and hold city centers,” Pahlavi said in his speech. last video message published on social networkscalling for more protests on Saturday and Sunday.

In an optimistic tone, Pahlavi said he was “preparing to return to his homeland”, hinting that the day he could do so was “very near”.

But Pahlavi has lived in exile for nearly 50 years, and while he has long sought to position himself as an aspiring leader, it is far from clear how much support he actually enjoys inside the country.

His father, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran, was widely despised in Iran when he himself fled into exile amid street protests in 1979, as the Islamic Revolution that brought the current regime to power took hold.