President Donald Trump said an American “armada” is heading toward Iran, as the death toll from the regime’s crackdown on nationwide unrest rose past at least 5,000, activists said.
Tehran on Friday dismissed as “completely false” Trump’s repeated suggestion that his threats had halted the planned executions of more than 800 protesters. Trump had said that such killings would be a trigger for him to launch military action.
“I said, ‘If you hang those people, you’re going to be hit harder than you’ve ever been hit,'” he told reporters on Air Force One as he returned from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “And an hour before this horrible” event, they canceled it, he said. “That was a good sign.”
Trump added that “we have an armada heading that direction and maybe we won’t have to use it.” The United States has “a big force going to Iran. I’d rather not see anything happen,” he added, but “we have a lot of ships going that direction just in case.”
The U.S. has dispatched to the Middle East a carrier strike group, as well as additional aircraft and land-based air defense systems, a U.S. official said last week.
Iran claims to have restored order following the nationwide demonstrations that began spreading late last year over the country’s collapsing currency and spiraling prices.
Experts watching the country, however, say the eruption remains an existential crisis for the Islamic Republic, whose latest crackdown is the deadliest since its establishment following the 1979 revolution, a United Nations fact-finding mission said Friday.
On Thursday, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said the confirmed death toll had now reached 5,002, including dozens under the age of 18.
Among the dead were around 200 members of the security forces and others aligned with the government, HRANA said.
The human rights group has been accurate throughout the years on details of demonstrations and unrest in Iran, relying on a network of activists inside the country that confirms all reported fatalities.
Other groups have offered similarly high numbers, though activists fear the true toll is much higher as the weekslong internet blackout makes it hard to verify information from inside the country.
On Thursday, Iranian officials offered the first official death toll.
State TV quoted the Interior Ministry as saying that 3,117 people were killed. Officials have previously said most of those dead were killed by “terrorists,” while blaming the United States and Israel for fomenting the unrest.
A United Nations fact-finding mission said that despite the internet blackout, it had managed to gather victim accounts and other evidence regarding allegations of “gross human rights violations.” The crackdown resulted in “arbitrary killings and severe injuries, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, arbitrary arrest and detention, and forced confessions,” it said.
Trump suggested that he would use military force against Iran if it shot protesters or went ahead with what human rights groups said were planned executions of some of the demonstrators.
However, he has not yet taken military action, crediting himself with stopping these killings. He reiterated this Thursday.
“I stopped 837 hangings on Thursday, would have been dead, every one of them, mostly young men,” he said on Air Force One.
This was firmly denied by Iran’s prosecutor general.
“The judiciary is an independent institution and does not take orders from foreigners” and “the claim by the American president about 800 executions in Iran is wrong,” Mohammad Movahediv was quoted as saying by Iran’s IRIB state broadcaster.
Movahediv called Trump “irrational and arrogant,” while calling his claim “completely false.” He added, “There is no such number and the judiciary never made such a decision.”
The president indicated Thursday that Tehran was nonetheless still open to negotiations, something it too has touted in the past.
“Iran does want to talk, and we’ll talk,” Trump said.
