The U.S. said emerging video and testimony from inside Iran suggests that more than 1,000 people may have been killed by government forces during a crackdown on protests in recent weeks.
“We know for certain it is many, many hundreds,” Brian Hook, the U.S. special representative for Iran, told reporters in Washington on Thursday. “Perhaps over 1,000. This is the worst political crisis the regime has faced in its 40 years.”
Hook said at least 7,000 protesters have been detained in a network of prisons that the Trump administration intends to sanction, adding that Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has determined they are responsible for gross human rights violations. Hook dismissed assertions from Iranian officials that protests in about 100 cities in Iran have had anti-American bias.
Iran acknowledged for the first time this week that its security forces shot and killed protesters last month during one of the most violent crackdowns on dissent since the 1979 Islamic revolution. State television on Tuesday reported that “rioters” had been shot dead in several areas as they joined anti-government protests, including in Tehran, the capital, and Mahshahr in the country’s southwest.
