After Iran’s foreign minister said Iran had “no plan” to hang people, Iranian state media on Thursday reported that a 26-year-old man arrested during protests in the city of Karaj would not be given the death sentence. Rights organisation Hengaw, which reported earlier this week that Erfan Soltani was due to be executed on Wednesday, said a previously communicated order for his execution had been postponed, citing his relatives. Iranian state media said that while Soltani was being charged with colluding against “internal security and propaganda activities against the regime”, the death penalty does not apply to such charges.
Trump’s comments on Wednesday led oil prices to retreat from multi-month highs and gold eased from a record peak on Thursday. Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene on behalf of protesters in Iran, where the clerical establishment has cracked down hard on nationwide unrest since December 28. People inside the country, reached by Reuters on Wednesday and Thursday, said the protests appear to have abated since Monday.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday the government was trying to address some of the economic problems that first spurred the protests, saying it intended to tackle issues of corruption and foreign exchange rates and that this would improve purchasing power for poorer people. Tensions had escalated on Wednesday, with Iran saying it had warned neighbours it would hit American bases in the region in the event of U.S. strikes, and a U.S.
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official saying the United States was withdrawing some personnel from bases in the region. Trump, speaking at the White House, said he has been told that killings in the crackdown were subsiding. Asked who told him that the killings had stopped, Trump described them as “very important sources on the other side.” Paul Salem, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute think-tank, said that while Trump has appeared to back away from action against Iran, he remained unpredictable. The Iranian government is at “a strategic dead end, but I don’t think they are at immediate risk of state collapse or regime change,” he added.
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