{"id":136629,"date":"2026-01-16T20:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T20:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/136629\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T20:13:10","slug":"trump-takes-unusual-step-of-thanking-iran-for-canceling-executions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/136629\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump takes unusual step of thanking Iran for canceling executions"},"content":{"rendered":"

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE and WILL WEISSERT<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump took the unusual step on Friday of thanking the Iranian government for not following through on executions of what he said was meant to be hundreds of political prisoners.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran canceled the hanging of over 800 people,\u201d Trump told reporters while leaving the White House to spend the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. He added \u201cand I greatly respect the fact that they canceled.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Republican president also suggested on his social media site that more than 800 people had been set to be executed, but he said they now won\u2019t be.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you!\u201d he posted.<\/p>\n

Those sentiments come after Trump spent days suggesting that the U.S. might strike Iran militarily if its government triggered mass killings during widespread protests that have swept that country.<\/p>\n

The death toll from those protests\u00a0continues to rise<\/a>, activists say. Still, Trump seemed to hint that the prospects for U.S. military action were fading since Iran had held off on the executions.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s rosy assessment did not match the more complicated situation on the ground in Iran but appeared to be Trump backing away from his early pronouncements that suggested a U.S. attack on that country might be imminent.<\/p>\n

Trump had previously posted of Iran and the protesters there, \u201cHelp is on the way.\u201d But asked if that was still the case on Friday, he replied: \u201cWell, we\u2019re going to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Questioned about who convinced him to back down on seeming suggestions that he would strike Iran, Trump said, \u201cNobody convinced me. I convinced myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou had yesterday scheduled over 800 hangings. They didn\u2019t hang anyone,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThey canceled the hangings. That had a big impact.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By DARLENE SUPERVILLE and WILL WEISSERT WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump took the unusual step on Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[66856,69532,143,145,144,69531],"class_list":{"0":"post-136629","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-iran-protests","9":"tag-is-trump-attacking-iran","10":"tag-oakland","11":"tag-oakland-headlines","12":"tag-oakland-news","13":"tag-trump-iran"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}