About 2,000 people including security personnel have been killed in protests in Iran, an Iranian official said on Tuesday, the first time authorities have acknowledged the high death toll from an intense crackdown on two weeks of nationwide unrest.
The Iranian official, speaking to Reuters, said that people he called terrorists were behind the deaths of both protesters and security personnel. The official, who declined to be named, did not give a breakdown of who had been killed.
The unrest, sparked by dire economic conditions, has posed the biggest internal challenge to Iran's clerical rulers for at least three years and has come at a time of intensifying international pressure after Israeli and US strikes last year.
On Monday evening US President Donald Trump announced 25% import tariffs on products from any country doing business with Iran - a major oil exporter. Trump has also said more military action is among options he is weighing to punish Iran over the crackdown, saying earlier this month "we are locked and loaded".
Tehran has not yet responded publicly to Trump's announcement of the tariffs, but it was swiftly criticized by China. Iran, already under heavy US sanctions, exports much of its oil to China, with Türkiye, Iraq, and India among its other top trading partners.
IRAN TAKES DUAL APPROACH TO PROTESTS
While analysts say Iran has ridden out bigger waves of protests, the current unrest comes at a particularly vulnerable moment for authorities given the scale of economic problems.
Underscoring the international uncertainty over what comes next in Iran, which has been one of the dominant powers across the Middle East for decades, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he believed the government would fall.
"I assume that we are now witnessing the final days and weeks of this regime," he said on Tuesday, adding that if it had to maintain power through violence, "it is effectively at its end".
He did not expand on whether this forecast was based on intelligence or other assessments.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi dismissed Merz's criticisms, accusing Berlin of double standards and saying he had "obliterated any shred of credibility".
Despite the nationwide protests and years of external pressure, there are as yet no signs of fracture in the country's security elite that could bring an end to the clerical system in power since a 1979 revolution.
Iran's authorities have tried to take a dual approach to the demonstrations, calling protests over economic problems legitimate while enforcing a harsh security crackdown.
"The government sees security forces and protesters as its children. To the best of our abilities, we have tried and will try to listen to their voices even if some have tried to hijack such protests," government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Tuesday.
Authorities have accused the US and Israel of fomenting unrest alongside the unidentified people who they call terrorists and who they say have taken over protests.
Parliament member Mohammadreza Sabaghian, who represents an area in Yazd, in central Iran, said the government needed to resolve people's dissatisfaction, warning that otherwise "the same events will occur with greater intensity".
The protests began on December 28 over the fall in value of the local currency and have grown into wider demonstrations over dire economic hardships and defiant calls for the fall of the clerical establishment.
A rights group had previously identified hundreds of people killed and said that thousands had been arrested.
INFORMATION BLACKED OUT
Communications restrictions, including an internet blackout over recent days, have hampered the flow of information. The UN rights office said on Tuesday that phone services had been restored but internet links with Iran remained patchy.
Videos of nighttime clashes between demonstrators and security forces over the past week, including several that were verified by Reuters, have shown violent confrontations with gunfire and burning cars and buildings.
US-based rights group HRANA said that by late Monday 10,721 people had been arrested. Reuters was unable to confirm the figures independently.
Rights groups say they have identified by name hundreds of those killed. Opposition groups outside Iran have said the death toll is far higher than the 2,000 estimated by the Iranian official on Tuesday.
HRANA said it received reports and videos on Monday from Tehran's Behesht Zahra Cemetery where family members of victims "gathered at burial sites and chanted protest slogans".
POTENTIAL DIALOGUE WITH WASHINGTON
Iranian authorities said on Monday they were keeping communication channels with Washington open as Trump considered how to respond to Iran's crackdown.
"We have the duty to do dialogue and we will certainly do so," government spokesperson Mohajerani said on Tuesday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday that while airstrikes were one of many alternatives open to Trump, "diplomacy is always the first option for the president".
"What you're hearing publicly from the Iranian regime is quite different from the messages the administration is receiving privately, and I think the president has an interest in exploring those messages," she said.
Foreign Minister Araqchi said Tehran was studying ideas proposed by Washington, though these were "incompatible" with US threats.
"Communications between (US special envoy Steve) Witkoff and me continued before and after the protests and are still ongoing," he told Al Jazeera on Monday.
