The US and its European allies continue to issue fresh threats against Iran despite a gradual return of normalcy in the country after weeks of violent protests and tensions around military confrontation.
While returning from the G7 meeting at Davos, Switzerland, Donald Trump had claimed on Thursday that the USS Abraham Lincoln, along with several guided missile destroyers and air-defense systems was moving to the region, reiterating that the US is watching Iran very closely and will target it militarily if such a need arises, Reuters reported.
Trump has been threatening to strike Iran since the beginning of the year, accusing it of brutal repression of protests.
The protests, which began in late December over economic concerns, turned violent in January, with several reports of attacks on public and private properties and religious and military installations.
Following the spread of violence, Iran suspended the internet and telecom services in the country for weeks. It accused Israel and the US of aiding the violence and called for large-scale counter mobilizations, which were attended by millions on January 12.
The USS Abraham Lincoln was ordered to move out of the South-China Sea and head towards the Middle East following reports of large-scale protests in Iran earlier this month.
Trump, after asking the protesters to occupy public institutions claiming “help is on its way,” later decided to drop the plans of military strikes. Meanwhile, the protests gradually died down. The internet and telecom services are also returning to normal in the last few days.
Trump’s claims on Thursday, however, led to the revival of speculations of possible US strikes over the weekend.
These speculations further intensified after several international airlines suspended or rerouted their services in the region.
Three Iranian nuclear sites were bombed by the US during the Israeli aggression on the country, what is known now as the 12-day war, in June. Iran had retaliated to the US strikes targeting its military base in Qatar.
In response to Trump’s latest threats last week, several Iranian military officials expressed the readiness of the country’s armed forces to retaliate. They were quoted by local press saying that just as US aggression failed in June, it will fail again, warning of a much heavier cost for the enemy this time.
Information warfare
Meanwhile, Esmail Baghaei, official spokesperson of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a post on X on Sunday debunked the “fake news” spreading in the Western media about the number of deaths during protests.
He called the claims of over 30,000 Iranians being killed during the protests “hitler-like big lies,” accusing that such fake claims reflect the actual desire harbored by people and groups of large-scale death and destruction in Iran.”
After weeks of speculation, Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs finally released official data last week of deaths and destruction in Iran during the protests. According to it, over 3,100 people were killed in the protests. Out of this over 2,400 were civilians and rest security forces.
The Iranian government claims most of these fatalities were a result of violent attacks carried out by the protesters.
European position is hostile and hypocritical
On Sunday, Iran issued a strong rebuttal to the European Parliament’s resolution on the country’s protests, calling it “hostile and hypocritical” and a “clear example of interference in the country’s internal affairs.”
On Thursday, the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning the “brutal repression” of protesters and expressing “solidarity” with them. It also demanded further sanctions on Iran and called for a ban on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ Corp (IRGC) as a “terrorist” organization.
Members of the Iranian parliament asserted that “the European Parliament, having failed to resolve the EU’s internal problems, now resorts to a policy of projection and interfering in other nation’s affairs to cover up its failures and evade accountability to European citizens,” PressTV quoted.
The Iranian lawmakers repeated the government’s claim that the violence during the protests was a result of direct interventions from Israel and the US and held the European parliament and the countries in the region directly responsible for “supporting, facilitating, and paving the way for terrorist acts against the Iranian people.”
Read more: Iran rejects Washington’s “false accusations” and continued attempts to fuel tensions in the region
The European parliament and European countries which kept silent and in fact, supported the Israeli genocide in Gaza, “cannot evade accountability to the Iranian nation and world public opinion” in this matter, claimed the statement.
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