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US pulls some personnel from Qatar as Iran warns of response to attack
Iran warned the United States on Wednesday that it was capable of responding to any attack, as Washington appeared to be pulling personnel out of a base that Iran targeted in a strike last year.
The tensions between the two foes, who have had no diplomatic relations since the Islamic revolution of 1979, come after President Donald Trump warned Tehran it could face action over a crackdown on protests that a rights group said had left at least 3,428 people dead.
Rights groups say that under the cover of a more than five-day internet blackout, Iranian authorities are carrying out their most severe repression in years of protests that have openly challenged the theocratic system that has ruled Iran since the revolution.
The head of the judiciary vowed fast-track trials for people arrested over the protests as fears grew that the authorities would make extensive use of capital punishment as a tool of repression.
In Tehran, authorities held a funeral ceremony for more than 100 members of the security forces and other "martyrs" killed in the demonstrations, which authorities have accused protesters of using to wage "acts of terror".
Some personnel have been asked to depart the Al Udeid US military base in Qatar, two diplomatic sources told AFP on Wednesday, with the Gulf state saying "regional tensions" were behind the move.
In June, Iran targeted the Al Udeid base in response to American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned Trump that the strike on the base had demonstrated "Iran's will and capability to respond to any attack".
The US embassy in Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, told its personnel on Wednesday to act with caution and avoid military installations.
Trump on Tuesday said in a CBS News interview that the United States would act if Iran began hanging protesters.
"We will take very strong action if they do such a thing," he said.
"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.
- 'Unprecedented level of brutality' -
Iran's judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said on a visit to a prison holding protest detainees that "if a person burned someone, beheaded someone and set them on fire then we must do our work quickly", in comments broadcast by state television.
Iranian news agencies also quoted him as saying the trials should be held in public, and said he had spent five hours in a prison in Tehran to examine the cases.
Footage broadcast by state media showed the judiciary chief seated before an Iranian flag in a large, ornate room in the prison, interrogating a prisoner himself.
The detainee, dressed in grey clothing and his face blurred, is accused of taking Molotov cocktails to a park in Tehran.
Monitor Netblocks said in a post to X on Wednesday that the internet blackout had now lasted 132 hours.
Some information has trickled out of Iran, however.
New videos on social media, with locations verified by AFP, showed bodies lined up in the Kahrizak morgue just south of the Iranian capital, with the corpses wrapped in black bags and distraught relatives searching for loved ones.
In the face of the crackdown and communications blackout, evidence of protest activity has sharply diminished.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War said the authorities were using an "unprecedented level of brutality to suppress protests", and noted that reports of protest activity on Tuesday were at a "relatively low level".
A high-ranking Iranian official told journalists on Wednesday that there had been no new "riots" since Monday, drawing a distinction between previous cost-of-living protests and the more recent demonstrations.
"Every society can expect protests, but we will not tolerate violence," he said.
- 'Crush and deter dissent' -
Iranian prosecutors have said authorities would press capital charges of "waging war against God" against some detainees. According to state media, hundreds of people have been arrested.
State media has also reported on the arrest of a foreign national for espionage in connection with the protests. No details were given on the person's nationality or identity.
The US State Department on its Persian-language X account said 26-year-old protester Erfan Soltani had been sentenced to be executed on Wednesday.
"Concerns are mounting that authorities will once again resort to swift trials and arbitrary executions to crush and deter dissent," Amnesty International said.
The Norway-based Hengaw rights group, which has closely followed his case, said it had no new information about his fate as it was unable to contact the family due to the communications blackout.
Iranian security forces have killed at least 3,428 protesters in their crackdown, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) NGO said Wednesday, adding that more than 10,000 people had also been arrested.
The group's director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam condemned the "mass killing of protesters on the streets in recent days", while IHR warned that the new figure represented an "absolute minimum" for the actual toll.
Asked about the number of deaths, another government official said Wednesday that "we do not have any number yet", adding victims were still being identified.
At Wednesday's funeral ceremony in Tehran, thousands of people waved flags of the Islamic republic as prayers were read out for the dead outside Tehran University, according to images broadcast on state television.
"Death to America!" read banners held up by people attending the rally, while others carried photos of Khamenei.
M.Moreau--JdCdC
