Iranian protesters are reportedly asking President Donald Trump to make good on his pledge to protect them from the murderous regime in Tehran, even as human rights groups report escalations of force by Iranian security forces and a growing body count.
The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said there have been at least 29 deaths and 1,200 arrests so far in the protests, which were ignited by deep public outrage at the deteriorating economy, the misplaced priorities of their terrorism-supporting regime, and the rank incompetence of Iranian public officials. Among other disasters, Tehran has been teetering on the brink of evacuation for months due to a severe water shortage.
Last Friday, as the protests were swelling into a real threat to the power of the theocracy, President Donald Trump said U.S. forces are “locked and loaded and ready to go” if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom.”
The U.S. State Department warned Iran not to “play games” with Trump on Sunday, after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan narco-terrorist dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Viral videos spreading through Iranian and international social media on Tuesday showed protesters asking for protection from the United States, with a plea rendered in English on placards and sprayed on city walls, “Trump, a symbol of peace, don’t let them kill us.”
According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the protesters are continuing unabated, and two cities in western Iran called Abdanan and Malekshahi have been effectively “taken over” by the protest movement. The NCRI said there have been multiple instances of protesters successfully driving regime forces into “retreat.”
“From city to city across Iran, sparks are turning into open uprising,” said NCRI president Maryam Rajavi.
“The voice of Iran’s streets, its bazaars, and its universities is a single cry: ‘Freedom, freedom,’” she said. “This is a fire that cannot be extinguished.”
Amnesty International on Tuesday confirmed reports that regime security forces attacked a hospital in Ilam where injured protesters were receiving treatment, denouncing the attack as an “unlawful use of force” and evidence of “how far the Iranian authorities are willing to go to crush dissent.”
Fox News Digital reported another such incident in Tehran’s Sina Hospital, where security forces were seen terrorizing patients and their families.
Radio Free Europe’s Radio Farda on Tuesday interviewed an eyewitness to a brutal regime attack on demonstrators in Malekshahi. When protesters lobbed stones at a building used by the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on January 3, IRGC troops took positions on the roof and opened fire into the crowd.
“Those who didn’t see them on the roof thought it was an air strike. But when some of the people who were shot fell to the ground, people realized they were shooting directly at them,” eyewitness Mohammad Heydari Ilami told Radio Farda.
“A number of innocent people, mostly young people, were killed. The number of wounded was high,” Ilami said. Independent human rights monitors said five protesters were killed in the incident, and dozens more were injured.
Radio Farda reported the IRGC was involved in the hospital attack denounced by Amnesty International, an event also witnessed by Ilami.
“Despite attacks by the security forces, including the use of tear gas, this crowd and the medical staff did not allow them to take the bodies and arrest the wounded,” he said. This evidently enraged the regime’s shock troops, who eventually forced their way into the hospital and “beat everyone they saw, whether they were members of the public or medical staff.”
The head of the Iranian judiciary, Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, issued an ominous warning on Wednesday that there would be “no leniency for those who help the enemy against the Islamic Republic.”
The regime has been desperately attempting to create a distinction between “legitimate” protesters, whose grievances the regime is ready to hear, and “rioters” who are acting as agents of the United States and Israel in a bid to destabilize Iran. Ejei’s statement was a reminder that the regime might be treating the “protesters” with a relatively gentle hand, but it will show no such compassion to the “rioters.”
“Following announcements by Israel and the U.S. president, there is no excuse for those coming to the streets for riots and unrest,” Ejei said, using Trump’s promise to protect the demonstrators as evidence that they must be foreign agents.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also expressed support for the protesters on Sunday, saying it was “quite possible that we are at a moment when the Iranian people are taking their fate into their own hands.”
Iran’s state-run Fars news agency claimed some of the protesters have been vandalizing banks, looting food stores, and “shooting at the police trying to disperse them.”
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