Name: Thousands feared killed: What options are left for Iran's protesters | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-01-15T17:25:37.000Z
Duration: 18 min 51 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Iran's foreign minister says there are no plans to execute anti government demonstrators.

Participle clauses

Echoing a statement from Donald Trump, the US President declared that the killing was stopping after he vowed to take action to support protesters.

But rights groups say security forces have already shot thousands of people who took part in nationwide rallies.

Iran has threatened to retaliate against any US intervention, triggering the evacuation of non essential American staff from military bases in the region.

This includes a Qatari base that Iran targeted last June following US Airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iran's civil aviation authorities reopened its airspace after closing it for a few hours.

Here's a map showing hundreds of planes avoiding the country for almost five hours.

Only a handful of international flights was allowed to enter or leave Iranian airspace.

So let's take stock of where we are with Middle east expert Daniel Gerlach.

He's editor in chief of Zenith magazine, which focuses on the Middle east and North Africa.

Let's start with that statement from Tehran.

No plans to execute people in connection with these protests.

Do we presume that that is because of US threats to intervene if those executions go ahead?

What seems to be the Iranian tactic at the moment, which is in a way ironic, because previously the Iranian executive branch, of which the foreign minister is a part, had always said that they have an independent justice system and they do not interfere in court decisions.

Now, the justice system, in particular the revolutionary justice system, which is responsible for these speedy show trials, is a very important instrument of repression of the Iranian regime.

It's a court system that is not there to do law enforcement.

It's there to threaten and to preserve the, let's say, the institutions of the Islamic Republic.

Now, the head of the judiciary is a former intelligence guy who was one of the most, let's say, prominent representatives of this revolutionary court system.

And if it's true, then it would be an interesting precedent because it would be the first time that the Iranian regime makes concessions on domestic affairs because of foreign pressure.

Previously, we've had quite the opposite.

For example, 2025, when America, mainly Israel, but

also America, struck Iran, we saw speedy executions, a lot of arrests, a lot quick trials, sometimes also secret executions.

So I think this is clearly a tactics, a stratagem of foreign policy, but

not necessarily any accurate information on what's going to happen.

I wanted to pick up on the caveat you put in there.

If this is true, do we believe that executions have stopped?

I cannot tell you because some of those executions are done in secret until Today, people do not know what the bodies, where the bodies are.

They don't know how many people have been killed, how many people have been arrested.

Often when people have been arrested, the families were not notified about it.

But clearly the motivation of the Iranian government to come up with such a statement.

He says, I believe that it's like this, but

it's not probably necessarily corroborated by intelligence means that that strategy, that tactic work on him.

For now, the White House was quite vague about what punishment would follow, if indeed any punishment would follow.

Tehran seems to believe the Trump threats.

Do you believe that there was the will to follow through in Washington on those threats?

I think there was a certain degree of will, yes.

But Trump was undecided, and I think he has been.

He sought the advice of his allies or interlocutors in the Gulf region, Iran's regional neighbors, the Arab Gulf states, but

And I think they tried to dissuade him from this.

I think they insisted that they prefer to have stability in the region, to not have any military escalation, not to have missiles that are being shot at U.S.

targets in the Gulf, which would also affect them and their air spaces.

And I think Trump is very much susceptible to that kind of.

And I think also the problem for the Americans is, until today, even if they decide to strike Iran, what targets would they strike in order to stop the repression and the killing of people?

They can strike military installations, the missile program, what's left of the nuclear program, but

that would have no effect on the repression.

So political pressure, military means, as a tool for political pressure on the Iranian regime is what the Americans have.

The consensus seems to be that this particular uprising has now been crushed.

Where does that leave the next uprising, and where does that leave the regime?

It's some sort of a Pyrrhic victory, as one of my colleagues put it, because every time the regime manages to crush a resistance and uprising, the cost is higher, it's discredited, the number of casualties grow, the tools of repression are there, but

And the regime is morally and politically completely hallowed.

That's why it's so important for the regime now to put their own victims to the front and say, police officers, our own people have died in these clashes.

This is why we saw these state funerals yesterday.

Absolutely because it's important for the regime to show these pictures also, for example, to show that clergy participates in these funerals.

Because that's somehow the image that the Islamic Republic wants to present of itself.

So it's a very, it's difficult for the regime at the same time to uphold the oppression and also to deter any protesters and at the same time pretend that they're back to normal.

And so they're trying to do both at the same time, whereas they always have the sort of Damocles of the Americans over their heads.

Because the Americans might have told the regime in if you don't change your policy, we will come with a full strike on your political leadership.

This is speculation, but it's possible that that's the message that the Americans sent to them.

But it's an interesting picture you paint there because for us non experts, Iran's theocratic regime appears to have a hold on the population and to be impervious to either political demands from within or, or political demands externally.

But what you're talking about is, seems to be a government that is actually running scared, of course, but

the only institution that really works in the whole Islamic Republic of Iran is the repression, is the system that preserves the power for the regime.

That's the only mechanism that runs like a well oiled machine.

But of course the cost is higher every time they repress an uprising.

And the question is like, it's basically a run against time.

Like how often will we see these uprisings?

How many people and how many groups of the Iranian people will participate in it?

And they cannot continue this game forever.

But at the moment it seems like nobody in the regime sees any alternative to continue that and to try to cling on to power.

So it crawls on because there is no, again, from the outside, there appears to be no single opposition figure who can take over.

I mean, we've had the Crown Prince Pahlavi talking from exile about leading some sort of transition, but

No, the Crown Prince keeps talking, the Crown Prince keeps giving statements.

And especially in the Iranian diaspora, many people who are not royalists today say everything is better than this regime.

So if it's for the sake of unity, we would also support the Crown Prince in a transitional phase.

But there's no scenario how that would work.

Because Iran is, as a matter of fact, the regime is there.

You cannot just fly in a Crown Prince and say, okay, now everything is different.

The Crown Prince has even presented a scenario of transition, but

that lacks one of the fundamental players, if not the key stakeholder, which is the Iranian regime, which has the power and the weapons.

And as long as, you know, people call for the Iranian people to rise up and to demonstrate, but

they don't have the tools to overthrow the regime, we'll leave it there.

Thank you so much for guiding us through that, Daniel.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Thousands feared killed: What options are left for Iran's protesters | DW News

sort

scenario

strategy

situation