afp | Following threats from US President Donald Trump, Tehran announced a suspension of executions in Iran for Wednesday and Thursday. There will be no executions by hanging “neither today nor tomorrow,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in an interview with US broadcaster Fox News on Wednesday. Trump declared that the “killings” in Iran had stopped. Meanwhile, Lufthansa announced that it was avoiding the airspace over Iran and neighboring Iraq “until further notice”.
Trump told reporters at a White House event that he had learned from a “reliable source” that “the killings in Iran have stopped,” adding, “They have stopped and there are no plans for executions.” The judicial authorities in Iran recently announced summary proceedings against the demonstrators arrested during anti-government protests.
When asked whether one US military intervention was ruled out, Trump replied: “We’ll look at it and see how the process goes.”
The US President recently threatened a sharp reaction if Tehran executed demonstrators as announced. On Tuesday he wrote in his online service Truth Social to the demonstrators in Iran that help was “on the way”.
Erfan Soltani should not be executed for the time being
Norway-based human rights organization Hengaw said the execution of protester Erfan Soltani had been suspended. However, there remain “serious and ongoing concerns” about the 26-year-old’s right to life, the group said, citing relatives of Soltani. Human rights groups and Washington had warned that Soltani’s execution was scheduled for Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Tehran emphasized that it had brought the protests under control. A senior Iranian official told reporters there had been no new “riots” since Monday, distinguishing them from previous demonstrations against high living costs. “Every society can expect protests, but we will not tolerate violence,” the representative said.
Iran’s foreign minister said in an interview with Fox News that Tehran is in “full control” of the situation in Iran “after three days of terrorist operations” orchestrated by Israel. The peaceful protests were infiltrated between January 7 and 10 by outside elements “who had a plan to create a large number of killings in order to provoke President Trump to interfere in this conflict and start a new war against Iran,” Araghchi said.
Iranian judiciary describes protesters as criminals
Iranian Justice Minister Amin Hossein Rahimi reiterated this claim. The rallies after January 7th “There were no more protests,” he told Iranian state news agencies. Whoever was arrested there was “definitely a criminal.”
Several countries, including India and Spain, called on their citizens to leave Iran given the tense security situation. The British government announced that its embassy in Tehran had been “temporarily closed.”
Several states had previously tightened their safety instructions for citizens in the region. The USA ordered some of the employees at its air base in Qatar to leave and asked citizens to leave Iran.
Air traffic was also affected by the developments. Lufthansa announced that it would avoid the airspace over Iran and Iraq “until further notice”. This applies “to all airlines in the Lufthansa Group,” a company spokesman told the AFP news agency. In addition, for connections to the Israeli metropolis Tel Aviv and the Jordanian capital Amman from Thursday and up to and including next Monday, the return flights would take place on the same day.
The UN Security Council will meet on Thursday at the request of the US for a “briefing” on the situation in Iran, a spokesman for the body’s Somali presidency said.
There have been massive protests in Iran over the past two weeks against the leadership of the Islamic Republic, which has existed since 1979. The authorities took brutal action against the demonstrators. The human rights organization Iran Human Rights (IHR) assumes that at least 3,428 demonstrators have been killed so far. However, there are numbers of those killed very different information. More than 10,000 people were arrested in the course of the mass protests.