{"id":375392,"date":"2026-01-17T15:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T15:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/375392\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T15:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T15:16:08","slug":"irans-supreme-leader-admits-thousands-killed-during-recent-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/375392\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran’s supreme leader admits thousands killed during recent protests"},"content":{"rendered":"

During his speech on Saturday, Khamenei also said Iran considered President Trump to be a “criminal” and said the US must be “held accountable” for recent unrest.<\/p>\n

He also claimed on social media that “America’s goal is to swallow Iran”. <\/p>\n

Trump has not yet responded to the supreme leader and the BBC has approached the White House for a comment.<\/p>\n

The US state department said on Saturday that it had “heard reports that the Islamic Republic is preparing options to target American bases”.<\/p>\n

It said Iran would be met with “a very, very powerful force” if it launched such an attack and warned Tehran not to “play games with President Trump”.<\/p>\n

The US president said on Wednesday<\/a> he had been told “the killing in Iran has stopped”, but added that he had not ruled out military action against the country.<\/p>\n

His comments came after the US and UK both reduced the number of personnel at the Al-Udeid air base in Qatar.<\/p>\n

Officials told CBS, the BBC’s US partner, that a partial American withdrawal was a “precautionary measure”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During his speech on Saturday, Khamenei also said Iran considered President Trump to be a “criminal” and said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-375392","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}