Updated January 12, 2026 — 12:54am,first published January 11, 2026 — 5:14pm
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Dubai: Iran’s parliament speaker warned on Sunday (Monday AEDT) that the US military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if the US strikes the Islamic Republic over the ongoing protests roiling the country, as threatened by Donald Trump.
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf made the threat after nationwide protests challenging Iran’s theocracy saw protesters flood the streets in the country’s capital and its second-largest city into Sunday morning, crossing the two-week mark.
At least 203 people have died in violence surrounding the demonstrations, activists said, with fears the death toll is far higher.
With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult.
Those abroad fear the information blackout is emboldening hardliners within Iran’s security services to launch a bloody crackdown.
Trump offered support for the protesters, saying on social media that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!”
Footage circulating on social media shows protesters in Tehran dancing and cheering around a bonfire.AP
Trump has been given military options for a strike on Iran, but has not made a final decision, according to reports in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
The State Department separately warned: “Do not play games with President Trump. When he says he’ll do something, he means it.”
The New York Times report says Trump is seriously considering authorising a strike in response to the Iranian regime’s efforts to suppress demonstrations, and the options presented to him include non-military sites in Tehran.
This screen grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran showed protesters once again taking to the streets of Tehran despite an intensifying crackdown by authorities.AP
Iranian state TV is reporting on security force casualties while portraying control over the nation, without discussing dead demonstrators, whom it increasingly refers to as “terrorists.” However, it also acknowledged protests went on into Sunday (Iranian time) with demonstrations in Tehran and in the holy city of Mashhad to the northeast.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has signalled a coming clampdown, despite US warnings. Iran’s attorney general, Mohammad Movahedi Azad, warned that anyone taking part in protests or “helping rioters” will be considered an “enemy of God,” a death-penalty charge.
“Proceedings must be conducted without leniency, compassion or indulgence,” he said.
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The demonstrations began December 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at over 1.4 million to $US1, as the country’s economy is squeezed by international sanctions in part levied over its nuclear program.
Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi last week called for demonstrators to take to the streets and urged them to carry Iran’s old lion-and-sun flag and other national symbols used during the time of the shah.
State television and news agencies have played video of purported protesters shooting at security forces with firearms, chanting “Death to Khamenei!” and stabbing security guards.
Concern is growing that the internet shutdown will allow Iran’s security forces to go on a bloody crackdown, as they have in the past. Ali Rahmani, the son of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi who is imprisoned in Iran, noted that security forces killed hundreds in a 2019 protest “so we can only fear the worst.”
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