Donald Trump has at least temporarily pulled back from threats to strike Iran, saying he has been assured the killing of protesters has been halted and no executions are being planned.
Speaking to reporters in the White House on Wednesday night, the US president said: “We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping – it’s stopped – it’s stopping. And there’s no plan for executions, or an execution, or execution – so I’ve been told that on good authority.” He offered no details and said the US had yet to verify the claims.
Trump had repeatedly talked in recent days about coming to help the Iranian people, saying the US was “locked and loaded” if Iran started to shoot at the protesters.
But despite reports that as many as 3,428 Iranians had been killed and executions as punishment were imminent, Trump made no announcement on military action. It is understood he had reviewed the full range of options to strike Iran, but was unconvinced that any single action would lead to a decisive change.
Trump has pulled off misleading feints with Iran in the past, suggesting in June his officials were fully engaged in negotiations with their Iranian counterparts over its nuclear programme when in reality he was preparing the strikes for the 12-day war last summer.
He said he had received assurances from “very important sources on the other side” that Tehran had stopped the use of lethal force on protesters and that executions would not go ahead.
“There were supposed to be a lot of executions today,” Trump said, adding that “the executions won’t take place – and we’re going to find out”. He gave no estimate of the number killed, a figure he had said on Tuesday he was about to be be given by his officials. Estimates vary wildly between under 2,000 to more than 12,000.
Trump had been strenuously lobbied by leaders in the Middle East to not to go ahead with strikes that would be certain to lead to an Iranian counterstrike on US bases.
Asked if US military action was off the table, Trump said: “We’re going to watch it and see what the process is.”
Earlier, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told Fox News that “there is no plan” by Iran to execute people in retaliation for the anti-government protests. “Hanging is out of the question,” he said.
In a video posted on Wednesday by Tasnim, a news agency close to the Revolutionary Guards, the judiciary chief, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, said: “If we want to do something, we have to do it quickly, do it at the right time.”
Erfan Soltani, the first Iranian protester sentenced to death since the unrest began, was widely expected to be executed on Wednesday, but his family have since been told it has been postponed.
The government’s internet blackout has entered its eight day although calls can be made inside the country.
Ahead of Trump’s statement Iran closed its airspace to almost all flights early on Thursday, and airlines including Lufthansa said its flights would avoid Iranian and Iraqi airspace “until further notice”.
Some personnel at a key US military base in Qatar were advised to evacuate, and the US embassy in Kuwait also ordered its personnel to temporarily stop going to the multiple military bases in the small Gulf Arab country. The US embassy in Saudi Arabia also urged staff to exercise caution and avoid military installations. The UK said it was evacuating staff from Tehran.
A senior Iranian official said Tehran had told regional countries hosting US bases, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, that it would attack those targets in the event of a US strike. In June, Iran struck al-Udeid base after the US hit nuclear enrichment facilities in Iran, though the strike was telegraphed and largely symbolic.
In his Fox News interview, Araghchi toned down the rhetoric, urging the US to find a solution through negotiation. Asked what he would say to Trump, Araghchi said: “My message is: between war and diplomacy, diplomacy is a better way, although we don’t have any positive experience from the United States. But still diplomacy is much better than war.”
There is no sign of a backroom breakthrough in the issues that divide the US and Tehran over its nuclear stockpile and insistence on enriching uranium domestically.
Iran executed more than 1,500 prisoners last year and Amnesty International urged the international community finally to act decisively to bring its systematic human rights abuses to an end.
The latest comments from Trump prompted a 3% drop in oil prices as concerns over possible disruption to global supplies lessened. Gold and silver also dipped on the news. Crude prices had surged over recent days as Trump talked about coming to the aid of Iranian protesters.
In a Reuters interview on Wednesday night, Trump expressed uncertainty as to whether the exiled opposition figure Reza Pahlavi would be able to muster enough support within Iran to challenge the regime. “He seems very nice, but I don’t know how he’d play within his own country,” Trump said. “And we really aren’t up to that point yet. I don’t know whether or not his country would accept his leadership, and certainly if they would, that would be fine with me.”
The UN security council is slated to meet on Thursday afternoon for “a briefing on the situation in Iran”, according to a spokesperson for the Somali presidency.
Foreign ministers from the G7 group said they were “prepared to impose additional restrictive measures” on Iran over its handling of the protests, and the “deliberate use of violence, the killing of protesters, arbitrary detention and intimidation tactics”.
