The announcement of the night, coming from the pinnacle of power in Tehran, was made even on Trump's favorite television

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Wednesday there was “no plan” by Tehran authorities to hang people when asked about anti-government protests sweeping the Middle Eastern country, Reuters and AFP write.

“There is no hanging plan,” Iran's foreign minister told Fox News in an interview on “Special Report with Bret Baier.”

“Hangings are out of the question,” Abbas Araqchi added, despite earlier promises by Tehran to speed up trials targeting protesters.

“I can tell you that I am sure there is no plan to hang, today or tomorrow,” Araqchi stressed.

“Terrorist elements led” by Israel

In an interview with Fox News, Araqchi insisted that after 10 days of peaceful demonstrations against Iran's economic difficulties, three days of Israeli-orchestrated violence followed, and “calm has been restored”.

“When foreign-led terrorist elements came into these protests and started shooting at police forces, police officers and security forces. And there were terrorist cells. They came and used Daesh (Islamic State, no)-style terrorist operations. They caught police officers, burned them alive, beheaded them and started shooting at police officers and people. As a result, for three days, we actually fought against terrorists, and not against protesters,” Araghchi said. “It was a completely different situation,” he added.

According to Araqchi, these “rogue actors,” “terrorists,” he spoke of, began firing on civilians for “one reason only”—namely, to draw the United States into the conflict.

“They wanted to increase the death toll. Why? Because President Trump said that if there were killings, he would intervene. And they wanted to draw (Trump, no) into this conflict,” the Iranian foreign minister continued. “And that was exactly an Israeli plot. They started to increase the death toll by killing ordinary people, killing policemen, starting some kind of fighting in different cities.”

Contrary to Araqchi's claims, there are eyewitness accounts describing Iranian government forces firing on unarmed protesters. Some even talked about snipers targeting innocent Iranians, according to testimonies published by the American newspaper The New York Times.

“We have full control”

During Bret Baier's interview with Iran's foreign minister, Araghchi insisted there were no imminent plans to hang or otherwise execute the protesters. The senior Iranian official also tried to downplay the unrest that has erupted in his country, claiming that “calm reigns” now.

“We have full control,” Araqchi added. “And let's hope that wisdom prevails. We don't want to get to a high level of tension that could be disastrous for everyone.”

According to the Society for Human Rights in Iran, an organization based in Norway, hangings are common in Iranian prisons.

AFP previously wrote that the execution of an Iranian protester arrested during the demonstrations, which according to some NGOs and Washington could take place on Wednesday, has been postponed. The announcement was made by an organization that campaigns for the defense of human rights, which warned at the same time that the convict's life is still in danger.

Trump: Executions in Iran have stopped

In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said he would take “very tough measures” if Iran starts hanging protesters, but did not elaborate. “If they hang them, you're going to see some things,” Trump said.

On Wednesday, the White House leader announced that he had been told that killings in the Iranian government's crackdown on protests were declining and that, in his view, there were currently no plans for large-scale executions.

“We have been informed quite categorically — but we'll find out what that means — that the executions in Iran are stopping and they have stopped, and that there is no plan for executions. I've been told that from a reliable source and I hope that's true,” the US leader told reporters in the Oval Office of the White House. The information had “just” reached him, the president said.

Asked who the people were who told him the killings in Iran had stopped, Trump described those people as “very important sources on the other side.”

Trump is currently weighing the US response to the situation in Iran, which is facing its biggest anti-government protests in years.

Iran fought a 12-day war with US ally Israel last year, and its nuclear facilities were bombed by the US military in June. Trump has put pressure on Iranian leaders in recent days, even threatening the possibility of military attacks.

According to several sources close to the White House, cited by The Washington Post, the Trump administration is divided on whether an attack on military or government facilities in Iran is the best option, since a military attack, similar to the bombing of nuclear facilities in June, involves a high risk of miscalculation or erroneous information by the intelligence services.

In his remarks from the Oval Office on Wednesday, the US president did not rule out possible US military action, saying that “we will follow the progress of the process”, and then noted that the Washington administration had received a “very good statement” from Iran.

“We'll watch the situation and see how it develops, but we got a very good statement from people who are aware of what's going on,” Trump said.

Trump's latest remarks appear to signal a cautious easing of fears that the crisis in Iran risks degenerating into a wider regional confrontation and the need for US military intervention.

The violent protests are one of the worst tests Iran's government has faced since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, as they have evolved from complaints of severe economic hardship to provocative calls for the downfall of the deeply entrenched clerical establishment.

US-based human rights group HRANA said it had so far verified the deaths of 2,403 protesters and 147 government-affiliated people. HRANA has reported 18,137 arrests to date.

The government in Tehran blames foreign sanctions for its economic woes and claims its foreign enemies are meddling in the country's internal affairs.