Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian expressed understanding for the economic difficulties of the protesters for two weeks now, but urged them not to destabilize the country and stated that the state must respond to the "rebels", the "New York Times" wrote this morning.
Faced with a wave of national anti-government protests, the Iranian president promised to deal with the economic situation, but warned that it was his "duty" not to allow the country to be destabilized.
For two weeks, demonstrators have flooded the streets of Iran, driven by economic difficulties due to the sudden drop in the value of the Iranian currency. In the past few days, the protests have turned into a mass movement with many calling for the overthrow of Iran's authoritarian clerical rule.
As the protests escalate, Iran's theocracy appears increasingly vulnerable, and senior officials are trying to shift the blame to the US and Israel, claiming that they support the protests, notes the "New York Times".
The British newspaper "Independent" in an extensive article describes the situation in Iran in recent days. Buildings, buses and shops have been completely burned to the ground, turning the capital Tehran into a "war zone", while protesters across the country demand the fall of the regime of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the publication writes.
Over 340 protests have been held in all 31 provinces of the country in the past two weeks, cites "Independent" Human Rights Watch.
It is difficult to gauge the scale of the protests. Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations. Videos circulating online offer only brief footage of people on the streets or the sounds of gunfire. Journalists in Iran also face restrictions on their reporting, requiring them to apply for permits to travel around the country, and are threatened with harassment or arrest by authorities.
The internet has been shut down across the country since Thursday, and people say they cannot contact their families because of the restrictions.
Amid rising tensions, US President Donald Trump said Tehran had offered talks, the British newspaper "Guardian" wrote.
"I think they are tired of being beaten by the US", Trump said, adding: "Iran wants to negotiate".
At least 538 people have been killed in the violence surrounding the demonstrations, including at least 490 protesters, the publication said, citing "Human Rights Watch". He added that more than 10,600 people have been arrested.
The brutal crackdown on the protests has raised the prospect of US intervention after Trump said he would "save" the protesters if the Iranian government continued its killings. He repeated his threat of intervention on Saturday night. "Iran is looking to freedom, perhaps like never before. The US stands ready to help!", the US president wrote on his social media "Truth Social".
In response, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned Washington that it was making "misjudgment".
"Let me be clear – "In the event of an attack on Iran, the occupied territories, as well as all American bases and ships, will be our legitimate target," threatened Ghalibaf, a former commander in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard.
The Economist examines the options available to Trump, who is under pressure to turn his words into action.
A symbolic air strike against the regime could intensify the protests, but it could also easily backfire on the US president himself, as it would be taken as a signal that Trump is not serious about his intentions. Protesters would become discouraged, leading to stricter measures against them by the regime.
Instead, the US president could consider a larger-scale attack on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). This would be a tangible blow and a psychological boost for the opposition. However, airstrikes will not stop the IRGC and its affiliates from firing on protesters in the streets. It may also discourage many Iranians who fear a state collapse, as has happened in other Middle Eastern countries.
The most radical option would be for the US to target senior figures in the regime, perhaps even Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Trump may be tempted to try to repeat his recent success in Venezuela, but such a mission would be much more difficult in Iran. In the ensuing power struggle, however, a disorganized protest movement, which still has no clear leader, would be at a disadvantage. The most likely winners would once again be the KGIR and their political allies, writes "The Economist".
V. "The Washington Post" seeks to answer the question of how the protests this time are different from similar situations in Iran during the Green Movement protests in 2009 and the demonstrations after the assassination of Mahsa Amini in 2022.
What is different now seems to be the defiance of the regime, fueled by a bolder and more irritated younger generation of protesters, the publication writes.
"The slogans of the demonstrators call for a fundamental change in the political system," commented Iranian journalist Yeganeh Torbati. "Several of the videos from Friday night showed people holding the flag of the Iranian monarchy, which was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution, and one showed a man painting a pro-monarchy slogan on a large billboard in Tehran," he added.
On the other hand, the Iranian government is not only facing internal conflict, the "Washington Post" wrote. The past few years of war in the region have made the Islamic Republic more vulnerable. Its puppet proxies in Lebanon and Syria have been either destroyed or weakened, while Israel's bold strikes on Iran - including targeted assassinations - show how weak and compromised the regime can be.
The country's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei still presents the Iranian state as the vanguard of the "resistance" against American hegemony and Israeli plots, but more and more ordinary Iranians see a corrupt elite as incapable of keeping the country safe, the publication writes.
"What distinguishes the current moment is the profound collapse of legitimacy and the growing demand of the people for regime change," noted Abbas Milani, an Iranian-American historian at Stanford University, adding that authoritarian systems rely on "fear" as much as "coercion" - but in the case of Iran, "that fear has visibly weakened".