Name: 'Help is on the way,' Donald Trump says as he urges Iranians to 'keep protesting' | BBC News
Uploaded: 2026-01-13T17:21:03.000Z
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Donald Trump has urged protesters to keep taking to the streets and that his help is on its way.

He said he has cancelled all meetings with Iranian officials.

Transition words & phrases

Let me put you put the post from Truth Social onto the screen because he has written, iranian patriots, keep protesting.

Save the names of the killers and abusers.

And then he says he's canceled all those meetings with Iranian officials that had been planned until, as he puts it, the senseless killing of protesters stops.

Let's go straight to Washington, straight to our correspondent, Paul Adams.

And Paul, we saw the president get on to Air Force One, add very little to that statement, but

it is significant in terms of what he's outlined there.

Yeah, he obviously indicated that the statement, the Truth Social statement, speaks for itself, and

I think we're right to highlight it and much of the language in it, because it does sound like a president who has decided on a course of action and also has decided that the Iranian regime may be on its last legs and that hence the kind of urging of the protesters to take over institutions, to log the names of people who are oppressing them.

It really does sound as though Donald Trump believes that this is the moment to bring down or to hasten the end of the Islamic regime in Iran.

Now, he talked about canceling meetings with Iranian officials.

We don't know, frankly, that any meetings were actually scheduled.

We'd heard him over the weekend saying that there had been some kind of outreach from the Iranians wanting to have a diplomatic dialogue, presumably about Iran's nuclear program, the subject of ongoing conversations with the Americans.

And he indicated that he was willing to have that, but that action might have to come first.

He seems now to be suggesting that he's not interested in having any of those conversations and that action may be imminent and may even be on its way.

of course, it is worth underlining all the caveats, we don't know what that is.

But say if it was a military strike, in part, it all carries significant risk as well, doesn't it?

I mean, he has a huge range of options from, you know, a repeat of what we saw last summer with B2 bombers flying all the way from Missouri to deliver that their bombs onto parts of Iran's nuclear program to Tomahawk missile strikes launched from submarines much closer to Iran that could take out specific facilities.

You know, let's say, for example, the headquarters or a barracks of the kinds of besieged militiamen who are involved in repressing protests on the streets.

There's been talk in the media here of cyber attacks, of disinformation campaigns designed to confuse and demoralize the Iranian regime.

I mean, he has an enormous range of options.

I think the one thing you can be pretty sure of is that this is not a president thinking about putting US Boots on the ground or even conducting an operation like what we saw with Venezuela just, you know, a little over a week ago, with helicopters flying in and capturing the leader of that country.

We're not going to be seeing that kind of thing.

There's the specter of Jimmy Carter's efforts to rescue American hostages held in Tehran after the Iranian Revolution in 1979 that ended in disaster and had terrible political consequences for Jimmy Carter, something that Donald Trump alluded to only the other day.

But he does have a range of options and it may not be long before we find out which one he's chosen.

I want to bring in Jihad Goal from BBC Persian, who's here in the studio and Jiha, check.

Just summarize for people watching and listening the scale of the protests we've seen and the most recent reports about numbers of deaths and those detained in the past few days.

Human rights organization they said around 650 people have been killed.

That was the number before the complete shutdown of Internet.

But we know in the past six days during the shutdown of Internet and completely cut off communication with outside world, there was the heavy crackdown on protesters.

Matthew, in the past few days some people went to the border with Iran, had a SIM card from neighboring country, get a signal, send out a message.

A very small group of people had Starlink satellite connections.

They get in touch with us, send messages.

The message we are getting is very common from from every corner of the country from small and large hospitals from Tehran to a small town, Abdanan in west of Iran.

They said our hospitals are overwhelmed with injured young men and women.

Our morgue is piled up with the bodies of young men and women.

We just saw a picture from parents, from mother, father lining up in front of the morgue and forensic in Tehran to identify their loved one to collect the the bodies of those people who have been killed.

I think, Matthew, the numbers we are hearing from so many people, there is a fear the numbers of those people who have been killed and injured must be in many thousands Jihad, stay with me because let us try to get more on exactly where you ended up.

Camelia Anthropi Faad is the editor in chief of the Independent Persian.

And thank you so much for being here with us.

I'm told that you are have tried to make contact.

Yes, I have relatives, immediate relatives, mother, brother, sister, cousins, everyone in Iran.

Finally after days of dark out and this Internet and phone services has been shutting down, my mother managed to call me like an hour ago.

Of course all of us were worried about all Iranians inside Iran.

Since Thursday I haven't had any words from any one of my relatives inside Iran.

And as I said again, I feel so much sympathy with all that Iranians inside Iran facing this brutal regime and lost lots of the loved one.

Well, that is a considerable relief because all around the world there are so many people in your position who haven't been able to talk to their loved ones to find out if they're all right.

Tell me more about where your mother is, what she's seen and the wider family.

Has anybody been caught up in these protests?

I heard from her most of the people she knows has been participating at these demonstrations and she was speaking on which it was the harshest day of the regime brutality confronting the protesters.

She lives in northern Tehran and in particularly and they said the sounds of the automatic refile didn't stop until early morning.

On Thursday evening in Tehran's time the shops were closing down at 1:00pm I mean like the grocery stores and somehow people managed to communicate with each other to appear at the demonstrations.

I was six years old when revolution happened and she sees so much similarity of that days which the street was so chaotic and everyone were feeling the regime last days is so much near.

She cannot participate at the demonstration.

She is with the walker and but observing and talking to the relatives and the neighbors and other people who were going in and out.

They are bringing back messages and I heard unfortunately one of the cousin has been shot on his eyes and looks like unfortunately he lost his eyes and he's still in hospital.

And she hurt most of the families before receiving the body of the loved ones from the hospital.

This person haven't been part of the demonstrator and it was a passerby and shoot accidentally by these rivals at the street.

Otherwise it's very hard to release the bodies to the family members.

And we've also been hearing at BBC Persian accounts where one person told our colleagues that they just keep killing, talking about the firing into crowds, live ammunition.

They talked about different areas around the country burning.

We've heard from Donald Trump, the US President in the last what hour, hour and a quarter urging protesters to keep taking to the streets.

Do you know if the protests are still continuing even as we are talking now?

We have some people in touch with our publication, the Independent Person communicating with us through the Starlink satellite equipment.

And we know that already in some of the cities like and it's in northern Iran, the demonstration start to forming.

We haven't had news from Tehran, as everyone knows is impossible.

People from Iran through the Internet sending footages and et cetera, unless they are connected with the satellite equipment.

When they were coming back from the protest, these people were sending us messages.

They have planned again tonight have demonstration their communication through calling each other how to go to the demonstration.

It's very secretive and it's passing messages through neighborhoods university students to each other and the communities form of asking each other to where and what time start the demonstrations.

President Trump messages has been heard because still Iranian can watch two or three Persian TV networking in Iran.

And we knew that and my family said that in some areas the regime goes to taking off these dishes from the rooftop of the people to even cutting off their ability watching live program from the Persian TV channels in Iran.

What President Trump messages is kind of promising.

He may want to do something in the favor of the protesters.