Iran’s government on Tuesday accused the United States of seeking to manufacture a pretext for military intervention, after US President Donald Trump threatened “strong action” over the deadly crackdown on mass protests.
– “US fantasies and policy toward Iran are rooted in regime change, with sanctions, threats, engineered unrest, and chaos serving as the modus operandi to manufacture a pretext for military intervention,” Iran’s UN mission posted on X, vowing that Washington’s “playbook” would “fail again.”
– President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the United States would react strongly if authorities in Iran started hanging people in their crackdown on a popular uprising against the government.
– “We will take very strong action if they do such a thing,” he told CBS News in an interview, when asked about hangings potentially beginning on Wednesday.
– “When they start killing thousands of people — and now you’re telling me about hanging. We’ll see how that’s going to work out for them,” Trump said.
– Trump reiterated a message he had posted earlier on social media, that “help is on its way” for the Iranian protesters.
– He also said it was unclear what the death toll in Iran actually was.
– “I hear numbers — look, one death is too much — but I hear much lower numbers, and then I hear much higher numbers,” he said.