The Trump administration has accused Iran of murdering as many as one thousand of its own citizens, including “at least a dozen children,” following a surge of protests that spawned after the government increased the price of gasoline.
At a press conference on Thursday, Brian Hook, the U.S. special representative for Iran, revealed that the State Department had reached the estimate after reviewing evidence sent from Iranian citizens, as well as evidence provided by U.S. intelligence services, reports the Associated Press.
In the city of Mahshahr, one of many places where protesters took to the streets, the government opened fire on the public “without warning,” Hook told reporters. The military proceeded to follow fleeing protesters into a marshland, where they were surrounded by truck-mounted machine guns and were subsequently murdered.
“Between the rounds of machine gun fire, the screams of the victims can be heard,” said Hook, who declined to show footage the U.S. government had obtained.
The New York Times conducted interviews with some of the residents of Mashahr, with one man describing the stipulations the government had placed on families wanting to see the bodies of their slain relatives:
One of the residents, a 24-year-old unemployed college graduate in chemistry who had helped organize the protests blocking the roads, said he had been less than a mile away from the mass shooting and that his best friend, also 24, and a 32-year-old cousin were among the dead.
He said they both had been shot in the chest and their bodies were returned to the families five days later, only after they had signed paperwork promising not to hold funerals or memorial services and not to give interviews to media.
Protests erupted across the country after the government abruptly increased the price of gasoline in mid-November. The day before the protests began, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had announced that the country was facing a budget deficit totaling more than half of its operating budget of $45 billion, reports the Times.
The economic strain on Iran comes after the Trump administration placed additional sanctions on the country in September for attacking a Saudi Arabian oil refinery. “It’s going to hell,” Trump told reporters regarding the country’s economy, according to the Times. “They’re practically broke. They are broke.”
The Iranian regime, which previously referred to demonstrators as “thugs,” has begun to change its attitude towards them, with Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, now calling the dead demonstrators “martyrs,” reports the Times.
Despite worsening economic conditions, Iran has still refused to meet with President Trump. However, the news agency reports that the government shows signs of trying to communicate with the Trump administration, including sending a foreign minister to Japan, a country that has offered to serve as an intermediary.
The United States and Iran have not had a direct diplomatic relationship since the Iranian Revolution, during which a group of Iranian students stormed the American embassy in Tehran and took hostage those inside. The ordeal lasted over a year, with the final hostages being released only hours after the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan.