{"id":198607,"date":"2026-01-30T05:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T05:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-says-iran-has-told-him-killing-has-stopped-as-he-pulls-back-from-strike-threats-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T05:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T05:11:09","slug":"trump-says-iran-has-told-him-killing-has-stopped-as-he-pulls-back-from-strike-threats-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-says-iran-has-told-him-killing-has-stopped-as-he-pulls-back-from-strike-threats-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says Iran has told him \u2018killing has stopped\u2019 as he pulls back from strike threats – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

US president says he has been assured by Tehran \u2018there\u2019s no plan for executions\u2019 of protesters
Iran protests \u2013 live updates<\/a>
Iran crisis explained: what we know so far<\/a>
Analysis: why western diplomats are wary of predicting regime\u2019s end days<\/a><\/p>\n

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: \u201cWe\u2019ve been told that the killing in Iran<\/a> is stopping \u2013 it\u2019s stopped \u2013 it\u2019s stopping. And there\u2019s no plan for executions, or an execution, or execution \u2013 so I\u2019ve been told that on good authority.\u201d He offered no details and said the US had yet to verify the claims.
Trump had repeatedly talked in recent days<\/a> about coming to the help of the Iranian people, saying the US was \u201clocked and loaded\u201d if Iran started to shoot at the protesters.
But despite reports that as many as 3,428 Iranians had been killed and that 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 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 \u201cvery important sources on the other side\u201d that Tehran had stopped the use of lethal force on protesters and that executions would not go ahead.
\u201cThere were supposed to be a lot of executions today,\u201d Trump said, adding that \u201cthe executions won\u2019t take place \u2013 and we\u2019re going to find out\u201d. 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 between under 2,000 to more than 12,000.
Trump had been strenuously lobbied by leaders in the Middle East not to go ahead with strikes that would be certain to lead to Iranian counterstrikes on US bases.
Israeli and Arab officials had told the US administration in recent days that the Iranian regime was not yet weak enough for American strikes to topple it, NBC <\/em>reported on Tuesday.
From Wednesday afternoon and through the night, Israel braced for a possible Trump move against Iran. Israeli officials remained largely silent, conscious that any visible role could allow Tehran to portray the protest movement as foreign-backed. Benjamin Netanyahu is aware that Israeli intervention would risk discrediting protesters and give Iran\u2019s leadership justification to escalate militarily against Israel.
On Wednesday evening, according to reports citing Haaretz and the Washington Post, Israeli officials conveyed to Iran, via Russia, that Israel would not strike first if Iran did not, with Iran reportedly reciprocating this understanding. Protest<\/a> unrest, however, casts uncertainty on the status of this informal understanding.
According to the New York Times, after Trump\u2019s remarks on Wednesday afternoon, the Pentagon was preparing to stand down forces and allow troops to return to base, with a senior US military official describing the president\u2019s comments as \u201can off-ramp\u201d. Long-range bombers in the US had been placed on alert for potential secondary strikes, the paper reported, but that posture was quietly paused by late afternoon.
In recent weeks, Trump\u2019s rhetoric and actions have swung sharply between threats of military strikes and sudden pauses, leaving analysts to debate whether this apparent unpredictability is strategic, chaotic or a blend of both.
Some strategists argue that such signals are meant to deter further Iranian repression and potentially force Tehran toward concessions without an actual strike.
Earlier, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told Fox News \u201cthere is no plan\u201d by Iran to execute people in retaliation for the anti-government protests. \u201cHanging is out of the question,\u201d 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\u2019i, said: \u201cIf we want to do something, we have to do it quickly, do it at the right time.\u201d <\/strong>
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<\/a>.
On Thursday, the Iranian judiciary said Soltani had \u201cnot been sentenced to death\u201d and if he was convicted, \u201cthe punishment, according to the law, will be imprisonment, as the death penalty does not exist for such charges\u201d.
The government\u2019s internet blackout has entered its eighth day although calls can be made inside the country.
Before Trump\u2019s statement, Iran closed its airspace to almost all flights early on Thursday, and airlines, including Lufthansa, said their 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 ordered its personnel to temporarily stop going to the numerous 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<\/a> 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: \u201cMy message is: between war and diplomacy, diplomacy is a better way, although we don\u2019t have any positive experience from the United States. But still diplomacy is much better than war.\u201d
There is no sign of a backroom breakthrough in the issues that divide Washington and Tehran over its insistence on enriching uranium domestically and its stockpile of the product.
Iran executed more than 1,500 prisoners last year and Amnesty International urged the international community 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 in recent days as Trump talked about coming to the aid of Iranian protesters.
In a Reuters interview on Wednesday night, Trump expressed uncertainty over whether the exiled opposition figure Reza Pahlavi would be able to muster enough support within Iran to challenge the regime. \u201cHe seems very nice, but I don\u2019t know how he\u2019d play within his own country,\u201d Trump said. \u201cAnd we really aren\u2019t up to that point yet. I don\u2019t know whether or not his country would accept his leadership, and certainly if they would, that would be fine with me.\u201d
Early on Thursday, the UN security council scheduled an emergency meeting to discuss the protests at the request of the US.
Foreign ministers from the G7 group said they were \u201cprepared to impose additional restrictive measures\u201d on Iran over its handling of the protests, and the \u201cdeliberate use of violence, the killing of protesters, arbitrary detention and intimidation tactics\u201d.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US president says he has been assured by Tehran \u2018there\u2019s no plan for executions\u2019 of protestersIran protests \u2013 live updatesIran crisis explained: what we know so farAnalysis: why western diplomats are wary of predicting regime\u2019s end days Donald Trump has at least temporarily pulled back from threats to strike Iran, saying he has been assured […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":198608,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-198607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}