US pledges assistance to protesters in Iran

US President Donald Trump called on protesters in Iran to continue demonstrating and “seize government.” He wrote about this on the social network TruthSocial.

“Iranian patriots, continue to protest - take control of your institutions! Save the names of murderers and those who abuse power. They will pay a heavy price. I have canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters stops. Help is on the way,” Trump said.

In turn, the European Union also supports Iranian civil society. However, Brussels does not expect a quick fall of the country's leadership under pressure from the protesters. Mainly due to the fact that Iran has not yet seen a political alternative that could change the regime of the ayatollahs. The head of the EU foreign policy service, Kaya Kallas, stated this during a press conference in Berlin.

According to Reuters, 2,000 people have died in two weeks of mass protests in Iran. An anonymous Iranian official told the publication about this. Thus, for the first time, the country's authorities actually recognized the scale of casualties during the forceful suppression of demonstrations. At the same time, according to journalists, the current authorities assign responsibility for the deaths of people, both protesters and security forces, to certain “terrorists.”

Iranians began protesting on December 28th. On this day, shopkeepers in Tehran took to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with the sharp decline in the value of the Iranian rial, which fell to a record low of 1.45 million rials to the dollar. Soon the rallies became massive, and political slogans were heard.

In response, local authorities limited access to the Internet and mobile communications. When protests spread to more than a hundred Iranian cities, the first reports of violence by local security forces appeared. The media wrote that the police were shooting at protesters with firearms. In the southern city of Shiraz, doctors said they had to treat a woman who had been shot in the head, while a doctor in the eastern city of Nishapur said security forces opened fire on protesters from rooftops.