Trump says killers of protesters will ‘pay a big price’ and urges Iranians to ‘take over your institutions’

Guardian-Jan 13th2026

Frances Mao (now), Yohannes Lowe and Fran Singh (earlier)

US broadcaster CBS now is also reporting a death toll of at least 12,000 people in Iran, potentially as high as 20,000.

CBS says it’s received that number from two sources within Iran through phone calls. Those sources have cited the number being given by activist groups on the ground tallying medical records from hospitals.

The Iranian regime has not provided any official numbers. Reuters news agency cited an unnamed official today saying about 2,000 people had been killed in the past fortnight of protests.

The US House Foreign Affairs Committee has also pushed out a strong message on X following Trump’s missive earlier. The tone from US officials has escalated.

“To the Iranian people: Ayatollah Khamanei has butchered your people, made rial the weakest currency in the world, and squandered your country’s resources.

“Make regime change inevitable.”

There’s been further information coming out today partly because the regime has allowed people to make some phone calls abroad.

Iranians are able to use their mobiles to make calls outside the country but they still can’t receive calls, Associated Press reports citing people in Tehran.

The co-ordinated blackout is still in place. The internet has been down for four days now, and texting services blocked too.

Verifying the death toll or even just assessing the scale of violence has been so difficult because we’ve only seen snippets of videos from inside Iran.

However, the footage that has reached Western media include horrific scenes such as scores of body bags lining the street outside a morgue in the capital.

0:46