Iran’s protest crackdown kills at least 6,126 people, activists say

Iran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests killed at least 6,126 people while many others still are feared dead, activists said Tuesday, as a US aircraft carrier group arrived in the Middle East to lead an American military response to the crisis.

Iran’s currency, the rial, meanwhile, fell to a record low of 1.5 million to one US dollar (1.47 million to £1).

The arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and guided missile destroyers accompanying it provides the US the ability to strike Iran, particularly as Gulf Arab states have signalled they want to stay out of any attack despite hosting American military personnel.

Two Iranian-backed militias in the Middle East have signalled their willingness to launch new attacks, likely trying to back Iran after US President Donald Trump threatened military action over the killing of peaceful protesters or Tehran launching mass executions in the wake of the demonstrations.

Iran has repeatedly threatened to drag the entire Middle East into a war, though its air defences and military are still reeling after the June war launched by Israel against the country. But the pressure on its economy may spark new unrest as everyday goods slowly go out of reach of its people.

The latest death toll figures came from the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in multiple rounds of unrest in Iran. The group verifies each death with a network of activists on the ground in Iran.

It identified the dead as including at least 5,777 protesters, 214 government-affiliated forces, 86 children and 49 civilians who weren’t demonstrating.

The crackdown has resulted in more than 41,800 arrests, it added.

The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the death toll, given that authorities have cut off the internet and disrupted calls into the Islamic Republic.

Iran’s government has put the death toll at a far lower 3,117, saying 2,427 were civilians and security forces, and labelled the rest “terrorists”.

In the past, Iran’s theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from unrest.

That death toll exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest there in decades, and recalls the chaos surrounding Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The protests in Iran began on December 28, sparked by the fall of the Iranian currency, the rial, and quickly spread across the country. They were met by a violent crackdown by Iran’s theocracy, the scale of which is only starting to become clear as the country has faced more than two weeks of internet blackout — the most comprehensive in its history.

Iran’s UN ambassador told a UN Security Council meeting on Monday that Mr Trump’s repeated threats to use military force against the country “are neither ambiguous nor misinterpreted”.

Amir Saeid Iravani also repeated allegations that the US leader incited violence by “armed terrorist groups” supported by the United States and Israel, but gave no evidence to support his claims.

Iranian state media has tried to blame forces abroad for the protests as the theocracy remains broadly unable to address the country’s ailing economy, which is still squeezed by international sanctions, particularly over its nuclear programme.

On Tuesday, exchange shops offered the record-low rial-to-dollar rate in Tehran.

Already, Iran has vastly limited its subsidised currency rates to cut down on corruption. It has also offered the equivalent of seven dollars a month to most people in the country to cover rising costs.

However, Iran’s people have seen the rial fall from 32,000 to a dollar just a decade ago, which has devoured the value of their savings.