European Parliament (EP) President Roberta Metsola has banned all diplomatic staff and all other representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran from entering all premises of the European Parliament, she announced on the social network X on Monday.
Iran said on Monday it was keeping communication channels open with the United States as President Donald Trump considers responses to the government's deadly crackdown on nationwide protests, which pose one of the most serious challenges to clerical rule since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Reuters reports.
Trump said on Sunday that the United States could meet with Iranian officials and was in contact with the Iranian opposition, while ramping up pressure on Iranian leaders, including threats of possible military action over deadly violence against protesters.
The American human rights organization "HRANA" announced that it had confirmed the deaths of 544 people - 496 protesters and 48 members of the security forces - while 10.681 people have been arrested since the protests began on December 28, and the protests have spread across the country.
Reuters could not independently confirm the reports. The flow of information from the Islamic Republic has been hampered by an internet outage that has been ongoing since Thursday.
Iran's leaders are facing fierce demonstrations that have escalated from protests over difficult economic conditions to open calls for the overthrow of the deeply entrenched clerical system of government, at a time when the country's regional influence has been significantly weakened.
Yet, despite the mass protests, there is no sign of division within the Shiite clerical leadership, the military or the security forces, while the protesters lack a clear central leadership. The opposition is fragmented.
Verified videos show Iranians gathered at the Kahrizak Forensic Center in Tehran on Sunday, standing next to rows of dark body bags.
Iran has not released an official death toll, but it blames the bloodshed on US interference and what it says are US- and Israeli-backed terrorists. State media has focused on the deaths of security forces.
Aragchi: "Communication channel" with the US open
"The communication channel between our Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and the US special envoy (Steve Witkoff) is open and messages are exchanged whenever necessary," Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Bageji said on Monday.
He added that contacts remain open through the traditional intermediary - Switzerland.
"They (the US) touched on certain issues, some ideas were put forward and in general (…) The Islamic Republic is a country that has never left the negotiating table," Bageji said, but added that the "contradictory messages" from the US show a lack of seriousness and are not convincing.
At a briefing with foreign ambassadors in Tehran, Aragchi reiterated that the Islamic Republic is ready for war, but also open to dialogue.
The ambassadors of Great Britain, Italy, Germany and France in Tehran were summoned to the Foreign Ministry, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, where they were asked to convey Tehran's request to their governments to withdraw support for the protests.
"Iran considers any political or media form of support for the protests as "unacceptable interference in the country's internal security," Tasnim added.
Addressing a large gathering in Tehran's Enkelab Square on Monday, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said Iranians are fighting on four fronts: "economic war, psychological war, military war against the US and Israel, and today, the war against terrorism."
Aragchi said on Monday that a total of 53 mosques and 180 ambulances had been set on fire since the protests began, adding that "no Iranian would attack a mosque."
Security camera footage from inside Tehran's Abuzar Mosque shows about a dozen people, mostly wearing face masks, vandalizing the building, throwing books on the floor and destroying furniture last week. Reuters has confirmed the timestamp and location of the footage. State media reported that the mosque was set on fire on January 9.
Trump: We might meet with the Iranians
Trump said on Sunday that Iran had called for negotiations over its disputed nuclear program. Israel and the United States bombed Iranian nuclear facilities in a 12-day war in June.
"Iran wants to negotiate, yes. We may meet with them. The meeting is being prepared, but we may have to act because of what happens before the meeting, but the meeting is being prepared. Iran called, they want negotiations," he told reporters on Air Force One.
Trump was scheduled to meet with senior advisers on Tuesday to discuss options for dealing with Iran, a U.S. official told Reuters. The Wall Street Journal reported that options included military strikes, the use of secret cyberweapons, expanding sanctions and providing online assistance to anti-government sources.
Military strikes would be extremely risky. Some bases of elite military and security forces are located in densely populated areas, so any attack ordered by Trump could cause massive civilian casualties.
Parliament Speaker Qalibaf warned Washington against "misjudgment."
"Let's be clear: in the event of an attack on Iran, the occupied territories (of Israel), as well as all American bases and ships, will be our legitimate targets," said Qalibaf, a former commander of the elite Revolutionary Guard.
However, Tehran is still recovering from last year's war, and its regional influence has been significantly weakened by strikes on allies such as Lebanon's Hezbollah after its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel also killed senior Iranian military commanders during the war in June.
Situation "completely under control", says Aragchi
The protests began in response to skyrocketing prices that made daily life even more difficult, and then turned into protests against clerical rulers who have ruled for more than 45 years.
Iranians are increasingly resentful of the powerful Revolutionary Guard, whose business interests – including oil and gas, construction and telecommunications – are worth billions of dollars.
Araghchi said on Monday that the situation was "completely under control" after protest-related violence escalated over the weekend. He said Trump's warning had motivated, he said, terrorists to attack protesters and security forces in order to provoke foreign intervention.
He added that internet services will be restored in coordination with security authorities.
A small number of messages and videos that arrived from Iran overnight show that the protests are continuing, but due to the continued internet blockade, it is difficult to assess whether the authorities' use of violence has succeeded in weakening the momentum of the movement, writes the British Guardian.
The protests, now in their 16th day, began when shopkeepers in Tehran took to the streets over the sharp fall in the value of the national currency. They later escalated into nationwide protests, with demonstrators demanding the fall of the Iranian regime – prompting a fierce response from the authorities.
Iran has previously suppressed waves of mass unrest with the use of force, notably in 2009 and 2019. The coming days are seen as a key indicator of the resilience of the current protest movement in the face of an increasingly deadly government response.
The foreign minister claimed that Western powers had turned peaceful protests into "violent and bloody ones in order to provide a pretext" for military intervention. Iranian officials accused Israel and the US of supporting the protests and using them to destabilize the country, despite the apparent mass participation of ordinary Iranians in the protest movement.
Iranian state television broadcast footage on Monday of tens of thousands of pro-government protesters who turned out to support the regime, after the country's president called for a "national resistance march." The crowd chanted "Death to America!" and protested against anti-government demonstrations.
The authorities' crackdown on the protests has sparked a wave of condemnation from the international community, and on Monday, Germany and Canada called on the Iranian authorities to stop the repression of citizens.
Hours before Araghchi's statement, Donald Trump claimed that Iran had reached out and proposed negotiations, while at the same time considering "very strong" military action against the regime for escalating the crackdown that has reportedly killed hundreds of people.
What little information has managed to get out of Iran during the internet blockade – now in its fourth day – shows the continued use of force against protesters and a sharp rise in the death toll.
"After some time, in the dark, shooting started and people were hit by bullets. There were no security forces on the streets. Based on what we saw, we suspect that the shots were fired either from drones in the sky or directly from rooftops," said a protester from the Punak neighborhood of Tehran, according to the Guardian.
He added that authorities appeared to have cut off the electricity before the shooting, leaving those gathered in complete darkness before the bullets started flying.
A video circulating over the weekend shows dozens of bodies in a warehouse in the Kahrizak area of Tehran. The Hengaw human rights group said the warehouse was being used as a back-up for a morgue that was overcrowded.
The footage shows families gathered around a large television, on which the faces of those killed in the morgue appear, in the hope of learning the fate of their loved ones who went out to protest and did not return.
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