Iran’s top prosecutor on Friday called U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that he halted the hangings of 800 detained protesters there “completely false.” Meanwhile, the general death toll from a bloody crackdown on nationwide demonstrations rose to at the least 5,032, activists said.
Activists fear many more are dead. They struggle to substantiate information as probably the most comprehensive web blackout in Iran’s history has crossed the two-week mark.
Tensions remain high between the US and Iran as an American aircraft carrier group moves closer to the Middle East, something Trump likened to an “armada” in comments to journalists late Thursday.
Analysts say a military buildup could give Trump the choice to perform strikes, though to date he’s avoided that despite repeated warnings to Tehran. The mass execution of prisoners had been considered one of his red lines for military force — the opposite being the killing of peaceful demonstrators.
“While President Trump now appears to have backtracked, likely under pressure from regional leaders and cognizant that airstrikes alone can be insufficient to implode the regime, military assets proceed to be moved into the region, indicating kinetic motion should still occur,” Recent York-based think tank the Soufan Center said in an evaluation Friday.
Prosecutor denies Trump claim
Trump has repeatedly said Iran halted the execution of 800 people detained within the protests, without elaborating on the source of the claim. On Friday, Iran’s top prosecutor Mohammad Movahedi strongly denied that in comments carried by the judiciary’s Mizan news agency.
“This claim is totally false; no such number exists, nor has the judiciary made any such decision,” Movahedi said.
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His remarks suggested Iran’s Foreign Ministry, led by Abbas Araghchi, could have offered that figure to Trump. Araghchi has had a direct line to U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and conducted multiple rounds of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program with him.
“We’ve a separation of powers, the responsibilities of every institution are clearly defined, and we don’t, under any circumstances, take instructions from foreign powers,” Movahedi said.
Judiciary officials have called a few of those being held “mohareb” — or “enemies of God.” That charge carries the death penalty. It had been used together with others to perform mass executions in 1988 that reportedly killed at the least 5,000 people.
At a U.N. Human Rights Council special session on Iran held in Geneva Friday, Volker Türk, the U.N.’s high commissioner for human rights, expressed concern over “contradictory statements from the Iranian authorities about whether those detained in reference to the protests could also be executed.”
He said Iran “stays among the many top executioner states on the earth,” with at the least 1,500 people reportedly executed last 12 months — a 50 per cent increase over 2024.
Meanwhile, Mohammad Javad Haji Ali Akbari, the Friday prayer leader in Tehran, mocked Trump as a “yellow-faced, yellow-haired and disgraced man” who’s “like a dog that only barks.” “That silly man has resorted to threatening the nation, especially over what he said about Iran’s leader,” the cleric said in comments aired by Iranian state radio. ”If any harm were to occur, all of your interests and bases within the region would change into clear and precise targets of Iranian forces.”
Iran’s foreign ministry lashed out at a European Parliament resolution adopted Thursday which slammed “repression and mass murders being perpetrated by the Iranian regime against protesters in Iran.” The resolution called for the discharge of those detained and urged the European Council to designate Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which was key in putting down the nationwide protests, as a terrorist organization.
The foreign ministry expressed “its strong revulsion on the insulting assertions” of the resolution. In an announcement issued Friday, it stressed that “any illegal or interventionist decision or position in regards to the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the country’s security defenders can be met with reciprocal motion by Iran, and responsibility for the implications will rest with those that initiate such actions.”
The newest death toll was given by the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which reported that greater than 4,700 of the dead were demonstrators. It added that greater than 27,600 people had been detained in a widening arrest campaign.
The group’s figures have been accurate in previous unrest and depend on a network of activists in Iran to confirm deaths. That death toll exceeds that of some other round of protest or unrest there in a long time, and recalls the chaos surrounding Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran’s government offered its first death toll Wednesday, saying 3,117 people were killed. It added that 2,427 of the dead within the demonstrations that began Dec. 28 were civilians and security forces, with the remainder being “terrorists.” Previously, Iran’s theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from unrest.
The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the death toll, partially due to authorities cutting access to the web and blocking international calls into the country.
US warships on the move
The American military meanwhile has moved more military assets toward the Mideast, including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and associated warships travelling with it from the South China Sea.
A U.S. Navy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to debate military movements, said Thursday the Lincoln strike group is within the Indian Ocean.
Trump said Thursday aboard Air Force One which the U.S. is moving the ships toward Iran “just in case” he desires to take motion.
“We’ve an enormous fleet heading in that direction and perhaps we won’t need to use it,” Trump said.
Trump also mentioned the multiple rounds of talks American officials had with Iran over its nuclear program prior to Israel launching a 12-day war against the Islamic Republic in June, which saw U.S. warplanes bomb Iranian nuclear sites. He threatened Iran with military motion that will make earlier U.S. strikes against its uranium enrichment sites “seem like peanuts.”
“They need to have made a deal before we hit them,” Trump said.
The U.K. Defence Ministry individually said its joint Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet squadron with Qatar, 12 Squadron, “deployed to the (Persian) Gulf for defensive purposes noting regional tensions.”