US President Donald Trump threatened yesterday to come to the aid of protesters in Iran if security forces fired on them.
The protests, now in its sixth day, has left several dead and posed the biggest internal threat to Iranian authorities in years.
“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump said in a social media post.
The United States bombed Iranian nuclear facilities in June, joining an Israeli air campaign that targeted Tehran’s atomic programme and military leadership.
Responding to Trump’s comments, top Iranian official Ali Larijani warned that US interference in domestic Iranian issues would amount to a destabilisation of the entire Middle East.
The comments came as a local official in western Iran, where several deaths were reported, was cited by state media as warning that any unrest or illegal gatherings would be met ‘decisively and without leniency’.
This week’s protests over soaring inflation are so far smaller than some previous bouts of unrest in Iran, but have spread across the country, with deadly confrontations between demonstrators and security forces focused in western provinces.
State-affiliated media and rights groups have reported at least 10 deaths since Wednesday, including one man who authorities said was a member of the Basij paramilitary force affiliated with the elite Revolutionary Guards.
The Islamic republic’s clerical leadership has seen off repeated eruptions of unrest in recent decades, often quelling protests with heavy security measures and mass arrests. But economic problems may leave authorities more vulnerable now.
Trump did not specify what sort of action the US could take in support of the protests.
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