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US President Donald Trump urged Iranians on Tuesday to keep protesting against the country’s theocratic leadership, telling them “help is on its way” as international outrage grows over a crackdown one rights group said has likely killed thousands.Iranian authorities insisted they had regained control of the country after successive nights of mass protests nationwide since Thursday that have posed one of the biggest challenges to the clerical leadership since it came to power in the 1979 Islamic revolution.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.New videos on social media, whose location AFP verified, 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.Trump, who has repeatedly threatened Iran with military intervention, said Iranians should continue their nationwide protests, take over institutions and record the names of “killers and abusers”.”Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “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.European nations also signalled their anger, with France, Germany and the United Kingdom among the countries that summoned their Iranian ambassadors to protest what French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called “state violence unquestioningly unleashed on peaceful protesters”.The European Union also summoned Iran’s ambassador in Brussels.”The rising number of casualties in Iran is horrifying,” said EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, vowing further sanctions against those responsible.- ‘In the thousands’ -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.Fears have also grown that the Islamic republic could use the death penalty to crack down on the protests, after Tehran prosecutors said Iranian authorities would press capital charges of “moharebeh”, or “waging war against God”, against some suspects arrested over recent demonstrations.”Concerns are mounting that authorities will once again resort to swift trials and arbitrary executions to crush and deter dissent,” Amnesty International 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 have declared three days of national mourning for those killed.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.- ‘Last days’ -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.”When a regime can only hold on to power through violence, then it is effectively finished,” said German Chancellor Friedrich Merz during a trip to India. “I believe that we are now witnessing the last days and weeks of this regime.”Analysts, however, 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 United States on Tuesday designated the Muslim Brotherhood branches in Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan as terrorist organizations, fulfilling a long demand of Arab allies and US conservatives.Founded in 1928 in Egypt, the pan-Islamist movement once spread across the Muslim world, but it has been in retreat as it comes under concerted pressure from major Arab powers.”These designations reflect the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained effort to thwart Muslim Brotherhood chapters’ violence and destabilization wherever it occurs,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.”The United States will use all available tools to deprive these Muslim Brotherhood chapters of the resources to engage in or support terrorism.”The designations mean that the United States will block any assets owned by the Muslim Brotherhood in the world’s largest economy and criminalize transactions with the groups.The move also severely impedes members’ ability to travel to the United States.Egypt hailed the decision, which President Donald Trump had set in motion in November after repeated calls within his Republican Party.The terrorist designation “reflects the danger of this group and its extremist ideology and the direct threat it poses to regional and international security and stability,” the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement.The movement rose to power in its native Egypt democratically through the 2012 election of Mohamed Morsi following the overthrow of longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak, under whom the Muslim Brotherhood was banned, although some of its activities were tolerated, including its network of social services.Morsi was deposed in 2013 in a coup by then military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has since pursued a sweeping crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood.Egypt as well as US-allied monarchies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have long sought to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood, whose vision calls for the creation of a transnational Islamic caliphate. – Turkey is key -Crushed at home, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members have focused on building a network overseas of businesses, media outlets and declared charities.A key base has been Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has deep and longstanding ideological affinity with the Muslim Brotherhood.The US decision will “put a lot of pressure on countries friendly with the United States — do they want to host entities that are designated terrorist organizations by the US?” said Lorenzo Vidino, an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood who directs The George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.”I don’t think that will destroy them, but there’s no question that it puts them under a lot of pressure,” he said.The Trump administration designated the groups in part on the basis of their support for Hamas, the Palestinian armed group long classified as terrorist by the United States.The Treasury Department said that the Egyptian and Jordanian branches of the brotherhood both have coordinated with Hamas, whose massive October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered an overwhelming Israeli offensive on Gaza.The State Department said that in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Muslim movement, had allied itself with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militants, in firing rockets into Israel.The Muslim Brotherhood had gained strength in Jordan, where its political wing is the main opposition party in parliament. In April last year, Jordan banned the Muslim Brotherhood, ordering confiscation of its assets, after accusing the movement of stockpiling weapons and planning to destabilize the kingdom, which has a peace agreement with Israel.In recent years, US conservatives have also seized upon the Muslim Brotherhood, with some spreading the unfounded conspiracy theory that the organization is infiltrating the US government with a goal of imposing Islamic sharia law.

Iranian authorities will press charges punishable by death against some individuals arrested during recent demonstrations, prosecutors said on Tuesday, as concern grew that one man arrested during the protests already risks imminent execution. The office of the Tehran prosecutor said in a statement quoted by state television that an unspecified number would be charged with “moharebeh”, or “waging war against God”, a sharia law term which is a capital offence in Iran and used widely in the past in death penalty cases.”A number of rioters whose charges are consistent with moharebeh will soon be sent to court,” it said.Rights groups have said hundreds, and potentially even higher numbers, have been killed in the protests.Iranian state media has reported that dozens of members of the security forces were killed at the hands of “rioters”.Iran is the world’s most prolific executioner after China, according to rights groups. Last year, it hanged at least 1,500 people, Norway-based Iran Human Rights group (IHR) said.Twelve people were executed over the last major protest wave from 2022 to 2023, according to IHR. Another 12 people have been executed on charges of spying for Israel since a war in June between the two foes.”Concerns are mounting that authorities will once again resort to swift trials and arbitrary executions to crush and deter dissent,” Amnesty International said.It is “extremely worrying to see public statements by some judicial officials indicating the possibility of the death penalty being used against protesters through expedited judicial proceedings”, added UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk.IHR said it feared the Islamic republic “is seeking to conduct rapid trials without observing fair trial standards for detained protesters”.It 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.It is not clear what the charges against him are and the case has not been reported by state media.Amnesty said it was also aware of reports he could be executed as early as Wednesday.”The international community must urgently call on Iran’s authorities to immediately halt all executions, including Erfan Soltani,” said Amnesty, adding it had learnt that his family had been told on Monday he had been sentenced to death.

Syria’s army told Kurdish forces on Tuesday to withdraw from an area east of Aleppo after deadly clashes in the city last week, as a senior Kurdish official accused Damascus of preparing a new attack.Syria’s Islamist government is seeking to extend its authority across the country, and progress has stalled on integrating the Kurds’ de facto autonomous administration and forces into the central government under a deal reached last March.In Qamishli, the main Kurdish city in the country’s northeast, thousands of people demonstrated against the Aleppo violence, with some burning pictures of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, an AFP correspondent said.Syrian state television published an army statement with a map declaring a large area east of Aleppo city a “closed military zone” and said “all armed groups in this area must withdraw to east of the Euphrates” River.The area, controlled by Kurdish forces, extends from near Deir Hafer, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Aleppo, to the Euphrates about 30 kilometres further east, as well as towards the south.On Monday, Syria accused the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) of sending reinforcements to Deir Hafer and said it sent its own personnel there in response.The SDF is the de facto army of the Kurds’ semi-autonomous administration and controls swathes of the country’s oil-rich north and northeast, much of which it captured during Syria’s civil war and the fight against the Islamic State group. An AFP correspondent saw government forces transporting reinforcements including air defence batteries and artillery towards Deir Hafer on Tuesday.Kurdish forces denied any build-up of their personnel around Deir Hafer and accused the government of attacking the town, while state television said SDF sniper fire there killed one person.- ‘Bloodshed’ -Elham Ahmad, a senior official in the Kurdish administration, said government forces were “preparing themselves for another attack”.”The real intention is a full-scale attack” against Kurdish-held areas, she told an online press conference, accusing the government of having made a “declaration of war” and breaking the March agreement on integrating Kurdish forces.”These assaults should stop,” she said, adding that if guarantees were provided “for the security of the civilian population, we are ready to continue the negotiation and dialogue”, suggesting the United Nations or other international organisations also take part.But, she added, “We will defend ourselves.”Syria’s government took full control of Aleppo city over the weekend after capturing its Kurdish-majority Sheikh Maqsud and Ashrafiyeh neighbourhoods and evacuating fighters there to Kurdish-controlled areas in the northeast.Both sides traded blame over who started the violence last Tuesday that ultimately killed dozens of people and displaced tens of thousands.In Qamishli, shops were shut in a general strike and thousands protested to voice their anger at the Aleppo fighting, some carrying Kurdish flags and banners in support of the SDF and its chief Mazloum Abdi.”Leave, Jolani!” they shouted, referring to President Sharaa by his former nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.”This government has not honoured its commitments towards any Syrians,” said cafe owner Joudi Ali.”There has been bloodshed since it took power, like the Alawite and Druze massacres,” the 29-year-old told AFP, referring to sectarian violence last year involving the two minority communities.- PKK, Turkey -Other protesters burned portraits of Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, whose country has lauded the Syrian government’s Aleppo operation “against terrorist organisations”.Turkey has long been hostile to the SDF, seeing it as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and a major threat along its southern border. Last year, the PKK announced an end to its long-running armed struggle against the Turkish state and began destroying its weapons, but Ankara has insisted that the move include armed Kurdish groups in Syria.On Tuesday, the PKK called the “attack on the Kurdish neighbourhoods in Aleppo” an attempt to sabotage peace efforts between it and Ankara.A day earlier, Ankara’s ruling party levelled the same accusation against Kurdish fighters.The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 45 civilians and 60 soldiers and fighters from both sides killed in the Aleppo violence.Aleppo civil defence official Faysal Mohammad told AFP on Tuesday that emergency workers had pulled 50 bodies from the two Kurdish-majority neighbourhoods since the end of fighting, without saying whether they were combatants or civilians.mam-strs-lg/smw

Rubina was a budding fashion designer inspired by Iran’s multi-ethnic population. Rebin was an up-and-coming teen footballer. Mehdi was a champion bodybuilder who also won weightlifting titles. Erfan had just turned 18.All four, from various regions and backgrounds, were according to rights groups victims of the Iranian government’s crackdown on protests, gunned down by security forces in their prime.With the scale of the clampdown only now starting to emerge, rights groups say they have verified the killing of hundreds of protesters but fear the final toll could extend into the thousands.Iran Human Rights (IHR) director Mamood Amiry Moghaddam told AFP that protesters killed were “mostly young men”, although six women had also been identified.Nine of the 648 people it has identified and confirmed to have been killed by security forces were minors, he added.”The killings are intense all over the country where there have been protests,” he added.Dozens of members of the security forces have also been killed, according to Iranian officials, who have blamed “rioters” and Iran’s enemies abroad for turning protests initially motivated by economic grievances into days of unrest.- A budding fashion designer -Rubina Aminian, 23, was a student in textile and fashion design at the Shariati College in Tehran, a prestigious institution reserved for women.Her Instagram feed shows her proudly displaying clothes inspired by her Kurdish origins in the west of the country, but also the region of Sistan-Baluchistan in its southeast.On the evening of January 8, the first night of mass protests in which thousands of Iranians flooded into the streets, she left her college and joined the demonstrations, according to the Norway-based IHR, which analysed and verified her case.She was shot at close range from behind, with a bullet striking her head, it quoted a family source as saying, adding that relatives travelled from Kermanshah in western Iran to identify her body and were “confronted with the bodies of hundreds of young people killed in the protests”.They were able to retrieve her body after overcoming objections from officials but, on returning to Kermanshah, were not allowed to hold any mourning ceremony and were forced to bury her by the side of the road.- A teenager -The Hengaw rights group, also based in Norway, has verified both the deaths and also the backgrounds of several protesters it said were killed by security forces.Erfan Faraji, a resident of Rey, outside Tehran, was shot dead by Iranian government forces during the protests on January 7, it said. He had turned 18 just a week earlier.A source close to Faraji’s family told Hengaw his body was identified among those transferred on Saturday to the Kahrizak morgue, from where images of dozens of body bags sparked international alarm.His family collected his body on Saturday and he was buried without any public announcement.- A promising footballer -Rebin Moradi, a 17-year-old Kurdish student, originally from Salas-e Babajani in Kermanshah province but a resident of Tehran, was a member of the capital’s youth premier football league and a youth player with Saipa Club at the time of his death.He was seen as “as one of the promising young talents in Tehran’s youth football scene,” Hengaw said.Moradi was killed by Iranian government forces who shot him on Thursday, Hengaw said.A source familiar with the case told Hengaw that Moradi’s family received confirmation of his death but that they had not yet been allowed to take possession of his body.- A champion bodybuilder -Mehdi Zatparvar, 39, from Rasht in the Caspian Sea province of Gilan was a former bodybuilding champion who became a coach and held a master’s degree in sports physiology, Hengaw said.”Zatparvar began weightlifting at the age of 13 and earned national and international titles in powerlifting and weightlifting between 2011 and 2014,” it added.He was shot and killed on Friday, Hengaw said.

US President Donald Trump urged Iranians on Tuesday to keep protesting against the country’s theocratic leadership, telling them “help is on its way” as international outrage grows over a crackdown rights groups say has left at least hundreds dead.Iranian authorities insisted they had regained control after successive nights of mass protests nationwide since Thursday that have posed one of the biggest challenges to the clerical leadership since the 1979 Islamic revolution that ousted the shah.Rights groups accuse the government of gunning down protesters and masking the scale of the crackdown with an internet blackout that has now lasted almost five days.New videos on social media, whose location AFP verified, 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 remains spotty, with frequent interruptions.Trump, who has repeatedly threatened Iran with military intervention, said Iranians should continue their nationwide protests, take over institutions and record the names of “killers and abusers”.”Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “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.European nations also signalled their anger, with France, Germany and the United Kingdom among the countries that summoned their Iranian ambassadors to protest what French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called “state violence unquestioningly unleashed on peaceful protesters”.”The rising number of casualties in Iran is horrifying,” said EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, vowing further sanctions against those responsible.- ‘Killing must stop’ -The Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR) said it had confirmed 648 people killed during the protests, including nine minors, but warned the death toll was likely much higher — “according to some estimates, more than 6,000”.The internet shutdown has made it “extremely difficult to independently verify these reports”, IHR said, adding that an estimated 10,000 people had been arrested. “The killing of peaceful demonstrators must stop, and the labelling of protesters as ‘terrorists’ to justify violence against them is unacceptable,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said.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 have declared three days of national mourning for those killed.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.- ‘Last days’ -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 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.”When a regime can only hold on to power through violence, then it is effectively finished,” said German Chancellor Friedrich Merz during a trip to India. “I believe that we are now witnessing the last days and weeks of this regime.”Analysts, however, have cautioned that it is premature to predict the immediate demise of the theocratic system, pointing to the repressive levers the leadership has, including the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which are 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”.Iranian authorities will press capital charges of “moharebeh”, or “waging war against God”, against some suspects arrested over recent demonstrations, prosecutors said, as alarm grows that the Islamic republic could use the death penalty to crack down on the protests.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 authorities will press capital crime charges against some suspects arrested over recent demonstrations, prosecutors said Tuesday, as alarm grows that the Islamic republic could extensively use the death penalty to crack down on the protests.The office of the Tehran prosecutor said in a statement quoted by state television that an unspecified number would be charged with “moharebeh”, or “waging war against God”, a sharia law term which is a capital crime in Iran and used widely in the past in death penalty cases.”A number of rioters whose charges are consistent with moharebeh will soon be sent to court,” it said.Rights groups have said hundreds, and potentially even higher numbers, have been killed in the protests.Iranian state media emphasises that dozens of members of the security forces were killed at the hands of “rioters”.Iran is the world’s most prolific executioner after China, according to rights groups. Last year, it hanged at least 1,500 people, Norway-based Iran Human Rights group (IHR) said.Twelve people were executed over the last major protest wave from 2022 to 2023, according to IHR. Another 12 people have been executed on charges of spying for Israel since a war in June between the two foes.It is “extremely worrying to see public statements by some judicial officials indicating the possibility of the death penalty being used against protesters through expedited judicial proceedings”, said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk.IHR said it feared the Islamic republic “is seeking to conduct rapid trials without observing fair trial standards for detained protesters”.It 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.It is not clear what the charges against him are and the case has not been reported by state media.