President Donald Trump has said Iran wants to negotiate butwarned he may still carry out strikes against the Islamic Republicover itsviolent crackdown on protestschallenging the regime's rule.
Activists say hundreds of people have been killed by security forces in their bid to quash the unrest, with the country cut off from the world by an internet and phone blackout that has lasted days. The situation was now under control, Iran's foreign minister said Monday, adding that the country was "ready for war but also for dialogue."
Trump has repeatedly warned that the United States may intervene if authorities open fire on the demonstrations, which first erupted two weeks ago over soaring prices.
Activists and analysts say the true scale of the crackdown was yet to become clear.
One video that circulated online Sunday was geolocated by NBC News to a forensic medical center just outside the capital, Tehran. It shows dozens of bodies in black bags spread out on the ground in the open air as people walking through the area can be heard wailing and crying.
Amid all this, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One late Sunday that Iran's leaders called him and "they want to negotiate." He added that "a meeting is being set up" but that "we may have to act because of what's happening before the meeting."
He said that "the military is looking" at "some very strong options." And asked about Iran's threat of retaliation, he added, "If they do that, we will hit them at levels that they've never been hit before."
In a brief interview with NBC News late Sunday, Trump said of a possible U.S. response in the coming days: "It could happen."
He said he was being briefed on the hour "or less" about the evolving situation on the ground there.
According to three U.S. officials, Trump has been presented with preliminary plans ranging from possible strikes to other options that would not entail military action. No final decision has been made, the officials said.
Iranian officials have suggested that they are indeed ready to talk — while still warning against any attack.
The situation was now "under total control," Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a briefing to foreign ambassadors in Tehran. He blamed the U.S. and Israel for the violence, without offering evidence.
"The demonstrations turned violent and bloody to give an excuse to the American president to intervene," he said, according to the Qatar-owned news network Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf warned Washington against "a miscalculation."
"Let us be clear: in the case of an attack on Iran, the occupied territories (Israel) as well as all U.S. bases and ships will be our legitimate target," said Qalibaf, a former commander in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard.
And there are few signs that the crackdown will ease up soon.
"We do truly believe that a massacre has taken place, and the extent and dimensions of it are yet to be known as the country comes out of the internet blockade, if it does," Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group, told NBC News in a telephone interview. "They don't seem in any rush to restore the internet."
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said Sunday that at least 572 people have been killed, 503 protesters and 69 security forces. Iranian authorities have released no official toll.
More than 10,000 people have been detained, according to group.
The demonstrations, which were sparked by economic grievances as the rial currency crashed and inflation soared, have now morphed into one of the biggest challenges the Islamic Republic has faced in the theocracy's 47-year history, as thousands of people have taken to the streets to demand the end of the ruling clergy.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres urged Iranian authorities to use "maximum restraint" in apost on Xon Sunday.
"Shocked by reports of violence & excessive use of force by the Iranian authorities against protesters resulting in deaths & injuries in recent days," he said.
At the morgue in Kahrizak, a town about 5 miles south of Tehran, the video geolocated by NBC News shows a TV screen scrolling through pictures of the dead, while the right side of the image shows a death toll of 250 and Friday's date.
Iranian state TV broadcast video of government supporters holding large counterdemonstrations planned by authorities Monday. But the protests challenging the regime are likely to continue, analysts say.
"I think everything is fluid. It's very hard to imagine what will happen in the coming days," Ghaemi said.
