Trump urges people of Iran to keep protesting, says 'help is on its way'

DUBAI, Jan 13: US President Donald Trump urged “people of Iran” on Tuesday to keep protesting and said help was on the way, without giving details, as Iran’s government pressed its crackdown against biggest protests in years.

“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!… HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, adding he had canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the “senseless killing” of protesters stopped.

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 U.S. strikes last year.

An Iranian official said earlier on Tuesday that about 2,000 people had been killed in the protests, 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.

On Monday evening, 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 U.S. sanctions, exports much of its oil to China, with Turkey, Iraq and India among its other top trading partners.

RUSSIA CONDEMNS ‘SUBVERSIVE EXTERNAL INTERFERENCE’

Russia condemned what it described as “subversive external interference” in Iran’s internal politics, saying on Tuesday that U.S. threats of new military strikes against the country were “categorically unacceptable.”

“Those who plan to use externally inspired unrest as a pretext for repeating the aggression against Iran committed in June 2025 must be aware of the disastrous consequences of such actions for the situation in the Middle East and global international security,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Despite the protests, which come at a particularly vulnerable moment for authorities given the scale of economic problems, and years of external pressure, there are as yet no signs of fracture in the security elite that could bring an end to the clerical system in power since a 1979 Islamic Revolution.

However, 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, 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”.