Claire KeenanBBC News digital
Iran’s foreign minister has called Donald Trump’s promise of intervention “reckless and dangerous”, after the US President warned Iran’s authorities against killing peaceful protesters, saying Washington “will come to their rescue”.
In a brief post on social media, Trump wrote: “We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” but gave no further details.
In a statement on X, Iran’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote, “Given President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard within US borders, he of all people should know that criminal attacks on public property cannot be tolerated.”
Iran would “forcefully reject any interference in their internal affairs”, he added.
Meanwhile an Iranian police spokesman said officers would not allow what he called “enemies” to turn “unrest into chaos”.
At least eight people are reported to have died during the week-long protests, as of Saturday morning in Tehran.
Two people died in clashes between protesters and security forces in the south-western city of Lordegan, according to the semi-official Fars news agency and the human rights group Hengaw, which said they were protesters, naming them as Ahmad Jalil and Sajjad Valamanesh.
Three people were killed in Azna, while and another died in Kouhdasht, all in the west of the country, Fars reported. It did not specify whether they were demonstrators or members of the security forces.
One death was reported in Fuladshahr, central Iran, and another casualty in Marvdasht, in the south.
BBC has not been able to independently verify the deaths.
Protests have spread to a number of cities and towns with running battles reported between security forces and demonstrators.
The protests started in Tehran among shopkeepers angered by another sharp fall in the value of the Iranian currency against the US dollar on the open market.
By Tuesday, university students were involved and they had spread to several cities, with people chanting against the country’s clerical rulers.
The demonstrations have been the most widespread since an uprising in 2022 sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman accused by morality police of not wearing her veil properly, but they have not been on the same scale.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has said he will listen to the “legitimate demands” of the protesters.
But the country’s Prosecutor-General, Mohammad Movahedi-Azad, warned that any attempt to create instability would be met with a “decisive response”.
The Reuters news agency reported that Iran’s UN Ambassador Amir-Saeid Iravani called for the Security Council to condemn Trump’s statements in letter to the UN secretary-general and president of the Security Council sent on Friday.
“Iran will exercise its rights decisively and proportionately. The United States of America bears full responsibility for any consequences arising from these unlawful threats and any ensuing escalation,” he said in the letter.