United States President Donald Trump has claimed that Iranian authorities reached out to seek talks following weeks of sustained anti-government protests across the Islamic Republic and repeated American threats of military intervention should Tehran escalate violence against demonstrators.
Speaking to journalists aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump stated that Iran’s leadership made contact the previous day indicating a readiness to negotiate. “The leaders of Iran called yesterday,” Trump told reporters, adding that “a meeting is being set up… They want to negotiate.”
The announcement comes amid one of the most serious challenges to Iran’s theocratic establishment since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, with mass demonstrations entering their third week despite what international rights organisations have described as a deadly crackdown approaching the scale of a “massacre.”
Trump, however, suggested that diplomatic engagement might not prevent immediate action. “We may have to act before a meeting,” he said, without specifying what form such intervention might take.
The protests, initially triggered by public anger over spiraling living costs and economic hardship, have rapidly evolved into a broader challenge to the legitimacy of Iran’s governing system. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, now faces what analysts regard as one of the most formidable tests of his decades-long rule, coming in the wake of a 12-day military confrontation with Israel in June that was backed by Washington.
Information continues to emerge from inside Iran despite a prolonged nationwide internet shutdown imposed by authorities. Videos circulated over recent nights have shown large-scale demonstrations in Tehran and multiple other cities, with protesters openly defying security forces and calling for systemic change.
The scale of the crackdown has drawn alarm from international human rights groups. The US-based Centre for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said it had received “eyewitness accounts and credible reports indicating that hundreds of protesters have been killed across Iran during the current internet shutdown.” In a statement, the organisation warned that “a massacre is unfolding.”
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) confirmed the deaths of at least 192 protesters but cautioned that the true toll is likely far higher. “Unverified reports indicate that at least several hundred, and according to some sources, more than 2,000 people may have been killed,” IHR said in its latest assessment.
The group also estimates that more than 2,600 protesters have been detained since the unrest began.
A video circulating on social media on Sunday showed dozens of bodies wrapped in black bags accumulating outside a morgue in Kahrizak, south of Tehran. The footage, geolocated by international news agency AFP, appeared to show grieving relatives searching among the dead for loved ones. The images have intensified concerns about the true scale of casualties, with many families reportedly unable to retrieve bodies or receive official confirmation of deaths.
An AFP journalist in Tehran described a city in a state of near paralysis. The price of meat has nearly doubled since the start of the protests, and many shops remain closed. Those that do open are forced to shut by late afternoon, around 4:00 or 5:00 pm, when security forces deploy in large numbers across the capital.
While fewer videos showing active protests appeared on social media on Sunday, it remained unclear whether this reflected a decline in demonstrations or simply the impact of the internet blackout, which has severely restricted the flow of information out of the country.
One widely shared video from Sunday showed protesters gathering again in the Pounak district of Tehran, chanting slogans in support of the ousted monarchy, a symbolic rejection of the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy that would have been unthinkable in previous years.
State television has broadcast images of burned buildings, including a mosque, and funeral processions for members of the security forces killed during the unrest. After three days of intense public actions, however, state outlets sought to project an image of normalcy returning, airing footage of smooth-flowing traffic in Tehran on Sunday.
Tehran Governor Mohammad-Sadegh Motamedian insisted in televised remarks that “the number of protests is decreasing,” though independent verification of such claims remains difficult given the communications blackout.
The Iranian government on Sunday declared three days of national mourning for what it termed “martyrs,” including security personnel killed during the protests. President Masoud Pezeshkian also called on Iranians to participate in a “national resistance march” scheduled for Monday to denounce what the government characterised as violent unrest.
In response to Trump’s repeated threats of possible military action, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf issued a defiant warning, stating that Iran would retaliate and calling US military assets and shipping “legitimate targets” in comments broadcast by state television.
The unrest has energised opposition figures in exile. Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of Iran’s last shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown in 1979, has emerged as a prominent anti-government figurehead. Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, he said he was prepared to return to Iran and lead a democratic transition. “I’m already planning on that,” he stated.
In a subsequent social media post, Pahlavi urged Iran’s security forces and government employees to defect and join the demonstrators. “Employees of state institutions, as well as members of the armed and security forces, have a choice: stand with the people and become allies of the nation, or choose complicity with the murderers of the people,” he wrote.
He also called on protesters to replace the flags outside Iranian embassies worldwide with the pre-revolutionary tricolour banner, which has become a symbol of the global solidarity movement supporting Iran’s demonstrators. “The time has come for them to be adorned with Iran’s national flag,” he said.
In London over the weekend, protesters succeeded in removing the Islamic Republic’s flag from the Iranian embassy and replacing it with the ceremonial flag used during the shah’s reign, a symbolic act that underscored the depth of opposition sentiment both inside Iran and among diaspora communities.
The current wave of unrest represents a convergence of long-simmering grievances: economic mismanagement, corruption, political repression, and social restrictions that have fueled discontent across multiple segments of Iranian society. The theocratic system established in 1979 under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has faced periodic challenges over the decades, including major protests in 2009 following disputed presidential elections, and in 2019 over fuel price hikes. However, the scale, persistence, and explicit calls for regime change in the current movement mark a significant escalation.
