Trump cancels meetings with Iranian officials and tells protesters ‘help is on its way’
WASHINGTON– WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is ending any prospect of talks with Iranian officials amid a crackdown on protests, telling Iranian citizens that “help is on the way.”
Trump offered no details on what the aid would entail, but it comes after the Republican president said days ago that Iran wanted to negotiate with Washington after its threat to strike the Islamic Republic, where the death toll from nationwide protests has reached more than 2,000, according to human rights monitors.
But Trump, with his latest social media post, appeared to make an abrupt shift in his willingness to engage with the Iranian government.
“Iranian Patriots, CONTINUE TO PROTEST – TAKE BACK CONTROL OF YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! ” Trump wrote in a morning article on Truth Social. “Keep the names of the killers and attackers. They will pay a heavy price. I have canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the senseless killings of protesters STOP. HELP IS ON THE WAY.”
The US president has repeatedly threatened Tehran with military action if his administration finds that the Islamic Republic is using lethal force against anti-government protesters. Trump told reporters on Sunday that he believed Iran was “starting to cross” that line and had let him and his national security team weigh “very strong options,” even as he said the Iranians had made outreach efforts to the United States.
And on Monday, the presidential team gave hope that a diplomatic solution could be found.
“What you’re hearing publicly from the Iranian regime is quite different from the messages the administration is receiving privately, and I think the president has an interest in exploring those messages,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday. “However, having said that, the president has shown that he is not afraid to resort to military options if he deems it necessary, and no one knows that better than Iran.”
Also Monday, Trump said he would impose 25% tariffs on countries doing business with Tehran “effective immediately,” but the White House did not provide details on the move. China, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Brazil and Russia are among the economies that do business with Tehran.
Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and top White House National Security Council officials began meeting Friday to hammer out options for Trump, ranging from a diplomatic approach to military strikes.
Iran, through the speaker of the country’s Parliament, warned that the US military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if Washington used force to protect protesters.
More than 600 protests took place across Iran’s 31 provinces, the Human Rights Activists news agency reported Tuesday. The activist group said 1,850 of the dead were protesters and 135 were affiliated with the government. More than 16,700 people have been arrested.
It was difficult to understand the scale of the protests. Iranian state media has provided little information about the protests. Online videos offer only brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire.
Trump’s pressure on the Iranian government to end the crackdown comes as he faces a series of other foreign policy emergencies around the world.
It’s been just over a week since the US military successfully launched a raid to arrest Venezuelan Nicolas Maduro and remove him from power. The United States continues to deploy an unusually high number of troops in the Caribbean Sea.
Trump is also working to bring Israel and Hamas to the second phase of a Gaza peace deal and to broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine to end the nearly four-year war in Eastern Europe.
But supporters urging Trump to take strong action against Iran say this moment offers an opportunity to further diminish the theocratic government that has ruled the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The protests are the largest Iran has seen in years — protests spurred by the collapse of the Iranian currency that have morphed into a broader test of the repressive rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
