US President Donald Trump warned Tuesday of unspecified “very strong action” if Iranian authorities go ahead with threatened hangings of some protesters, with Tehran calling American warnings a “pretext for military intervention”.International outrage has built over the crackdown that a rights group said has likely killed thousands during protests posing one of the biggest challenges yet to Iran’s clerical leadership.Iran’s UN mission posted a statement on X, vowing that Washington’s “playbook” would “fail again”.”US fantasies and policy toward Iran are rooted in regime change, with sanctions, threats, engineered unrest, and chaos serving as the modus operandi to manufacture a pretext for military intervention,” the post said.  Iranian authorities have insisted they had regained control of the country after successive nights of mass protests nationwide since Thursday.Rights groups accuse the government of fatally shooting protesters and masking the scale of the crackdown with an internet blackout that has now surpassed the five-day mark.Trump — who earlier told the protesters in Iran that “help is on its way” — told CBS News that the United States would act if Iran began hanging protesters.Tehran prosecutors said Iranian authorities would press capital charges of “moharebeh”, or “waging war against God”, against some suspects arrested over recent demonstrations.”We will take very strong action if they do such a thing,” said the American leader, who has repeatedly threatened Iran with military intervention.”When they start killing thousands of people — and now you’re telling me about hanging. We’ll see how that’s going to work out for them,” Trump said.New videos on social media, with locations verified by AFP, showed bodies lined up in the Kahrizak morgue just south of the Iranian capital, with the corpses wrapped in black bags and distraught relatives searching for loved ones.International phone links were restored on Tuesday, but only for outgoing calls, according to an AFP journalist, and the quality remained spotty, with frequent interruptions.Earlier Tuesday, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform urge Iranians to “KEEP PROTESTING”, adding: “I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”It was not immediately clear what meetings he was referring to or what the nature of the help would be. – ‘Rising casualties’ -European nations also signalled their anger over the crackdown, with France, Germany and the United Kingdom among the countries that summoned their Iranian ambassadors, as did the European Union. “The rising number of casualties in Iran is horrifying,” said EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, vowing further sanctions against those responsible.The Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR) said it had confirmed 734 people killed during the protests, including nine minors, but warned the death toll was likely far higher.”The figures we publish are based on information received from fewer than half of the country’s provinces and fewer than 10 percent of Iran’s hospitals. The real number of those killed is likely in the thousands,” IHR’s director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said.IHR highlighted the case of Erfan Soltani, 26, who was arrested last week in the Tehran satellite city of Karaj and who, according to a family source, has already been sentenced to death and is due to be executed as early as Wednesday.Iranian state media has said dozens of members of the security forces have been killed, with their funerals turning into large pro-government rallies. Authorities in Tehran have announced a mass funeral ceremony in the capital on Wednesday for the “martyrs” of recent days.Amir, an Iraqi computer scientist, returned to Baghdad on Monday and described dramatic scenes in Tehran.”On Thursday night, my friends and I saw protesters in Tehran’s Sarsabz neighbourhood amid a heavy military presence. The police were firing rubber bullets,” he told AFP in Iraq.- ‘Serious challenge -The government on Monday sought to regain control of the streets with mass nationwide rallies that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hailed as proof that the protest movement was defeated, calling them a “warning” to the United States. In power since 1989 and now aged 86, Khamenei has faced significant challenges, most recently the 12-day war in June against Israel, which resulted in the killing of top security officials and forced him to go into hiding.Analysts have cautioned that it is premature to predict the immediate demise of the theocratic system, pointing to the repressive levers the leadership controls, including the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is charged with safeguarding the Islamic revolution.”These protests arguably represent the most serious challenge to the Islamic republic in years, both in scale and in their increasingly explicit political demands,” Nicole Grajewski, professor at the Sciences Po Centre for International Studies in Paris, told AFP.She said it was unclear if the protests would unseat the leadership, pointing to “the sheer depth and resilience of Iran’s repressive apparatus”.

The US Commerce Department on Tuesday opened the door for Nvidia to sell advanced artificial intelligence chips in China with restrictions, following through on a policy shift announced last month by President Donald Trump.The change would permit Nvidia to sell its powerful H200 chip to Chinese buyers if certain conditions are met — including proof of “sufficient” US supply — while sales of its most advanced processors would still be blocked.However, uncertainty has grown over how much demand there will be from Chinese companies, as Beijing has reportedly been encouraging tech companies to use homegrown chips.Chinese officials have informed some tech companies they would only approve buying H200 chips under special circumstances, such as development labs or university research, news website The Information reported on Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the situation.The Information had previously reported that Chinese officials were calling on companies there to pause H200 purchases while they deliberated requiring them to buy a certain ratio of AI chips made by Nvidia rivals in China.In its official update on Tuesday, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) said it had changed the licensing review policy for H200 and similar chips from a presumption of denial to handling applications case by case.Trump announced on December 9, 2025 that he had reached an agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping to allow Nvidia to export its H200 chips to China, with the US government getting a 25-percent cut of sales.The move marked a significant shift in US export policy for advanced AI chips, which Joe Biden’s administration had heavily restricted over national security concerns about Chinese military applications.Democrats in Congress have criticized the shift as a huge mistake that will help the Chinese military and economy.Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has advocated for the company to be allowed to sell some of its more advanced chips in China, arguing the importance of AI systems around the world being built on US technology.The chips — graphic processing units or GPUs — are used to train the AI models that are the bedrock of the generative AI revolution launched with the release of ChatGPT in 2022.The GPU sector is dominated by Nvidia, now the world’s most valuable company thanks to frenzied global demand and optimism for AI.China and the United States are competing for dominance in AI.H200s are roughly 18 months behind the US company’s most state-of-the-art offerings, which will still be off-limits to China.

The United States said Tuesday it would end a special protected status for Somalis, telling them they must leave the country by mid-March under an escalating crackdown on the community. There is a large Somali community in Minnesota, the Midwestern state at the forefront of raids and searches by immigration officers, one of whom shot and killed a local woman last week, sparking protests.Minnesota has sought a temporary restraining order for the ICE operation in the state which, if granted by a federal judge, would pause the enforcement sweeps that have so far reportedly led to 2,000 arrests.In recent weeks Washington has lashed out at Somali immigrants, alleging large-scale public benefit fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest in the country with around 80,000 members.The Department of Homeland Security said on X it was “ENDING Temporary Protected Status for Somalians in the United States.” “Our message is clear. Go back to your own country, or we’ll send you back ourselves,” it said.DHS followed up by re-tweeting its initial post with a photograph of President Donald Trump and the caption “I am the captain now,” a reference to the film “Captain Phillips” in which a tanker is seized by Somali pirates.Temporary Protected Status (TPS) shields certain foreigners from deportation to disaster zones and allows them the right to work.Tuesday’s announcement set a March 17 departure deadline for Somalis losing their legal status.Ilhan Omar, the first Somali-American elected to Congress, said Saturday Trump is “trying to scare them and terrorize them every single day… And what we know is that Somalis are not intimidated.”On Tuesday, the Republican president took to his Truth Social platform to attack Democrats who lead Minneapolis, its twin city St. Paul, and Minnesota. – Alleged major benefit fraud -“Minnesota Democrats love the unrest that anarchists and professional agitators are causing because it gets the spotlight off of the 19 Billion Dollars that was stolen by really bad and deranged people,” Trump wrote. “FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!”Local community organizer Mowlid Mohamed told AFP “it looks like the state of Minnesota is under a persecution by the federal government.””They (are) weaponizing the federal agencies to the state of Minnesota to make it that they show their power — and this is one of the tools that they’re using specifically targeting the Somali people.”Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) meanwhile has kept up its migrant sweeps across Minnesota.On Tuesday masked officers dragged a woman from her car as ICE agents conducted checks. Another individual was carried away by their limbs.Renee Nicole Good, 37, was shot dead in her car by an ICE officer Wednesday in Minneapolis.Three federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned after coming under pressure to focus the probe into Good’s death on her widow’s actions, US media reported Tuesday.The Trump administration in recent months has latched onto news of a large-scale public benefit fraud scandal to carry out immigration raids and harsher policies targeting Minnesota’s Somali community.Federal charges have been filed against 98 people accused of embezzlement of public funds and — as US Attorney General Pam Bondi stressed — 85 of the defendants were “of Somali descent.” Fifty-seven people have already been convicted in the scheme to divert $300 million in public grants, prosecutors said.Republican elected officials and federal prosecutors accuse local Democratic authorities of turning a blind eye to numerous warnings because the fraud involved Minnesota’s Somali community.