What else is known about the protests in Iran: Quiet in Tehran as drones fly in the sky. What is the situation in other cities?
In Tehran the protests were suppressed and large billboards appeared with the national flag and the message “Iran is our motherland, the flag is our shroud”. Photo: AA/ABACA / Abaca Press / Profimedia
A bloody crackdown by Iran's authorities appears to have quelled the protests for now, according to a human rights organization and several citizens in different parts of the country, and the regime's state media in Tehran says arrests are continuing, according to Reuters.
After President Donald Trump's repeated threats of military action against Iran in support of the protesters, fears of a US strike eased as of Wednesday, when Trump said he had been told the death toll by crackdown forces was falling.
US allies, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have been in intense diplomatic negotiations with Washington this week to prevent a US attack, warning of consequences for the entire region that would eventually impact the United States, a Gulf official said.
The White House said Thursday that Trump was closely monitoring the situation there, adding that the president and his team had warned Iran that there would be “serious consequences” if the killings related to the crackdown continued.
Trump has been told that 800 scheduled executions have been stayed, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt added, saying the president is “keeping all his options open.”
The protests erupted on December 28 over soaring inflation in Iran, whose economy has been crippled by sanctions, before turning into one of the biggest challenges yet to the clerical regime that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Calm in Tehran and cities where protests took place
With the flow of information from Iran blocked by the internet outage, several residents of Tehran said the capital has been quiet since Sunday.
They said drones were flying over the city, where there had been no sign of protests on Thursday and Friday.
The Iranian-Kurdish human rights organization Hengaw said there had been no further demonstrations since Sunday, saying “the security environment remains extremely restrictive”.
“Our independent sources confirm a heavy military and security presence in cities and towns where protests have taken place previously, as well as in several locations that have not seen major demonstrations,” Hengaw, which operates from Norway, said.
Another resident of a northern Caspian city said the streets there also seemed calm.
Calm has been restored across the country, Iran's police chief was quoted as saying by state-run Press TV.
Where other disturbances have been reported
Hengaw reported that a female nurse was killed by direct fire from government forces during protests in Karaj, western Iran. Reuters could not independently verify this information.
The state-run Tasnim news agency reported that on Thursday, protesters set fire to a local education office in Falavarjan County, in the central province of Isfahan.
An elderly resident of a town in Iran's northwestern region, home to many Iranian Kurds and the center of many of the biggest riots, said sporadic protests continued, though not as intense.
The death toll reported by US-based human rights group HRANA has risen slightly since Wednesday, now standing at 2,677, including 2,478 protesters and 163 people identified as government-affiliated.
The number of victims is much higher than the death toll during previous unrest that was suppressed by the state.
Iranian authorities have described the riots as their most violent yet, accusing foreign enemies of instigating them and gunmen they identified as terrorists attacking security forces and carrying out other attacks.
