The anti-government demonstrations continued on Saturday, amid reports of overwhelmed hospitals and an appeal by the Iranian military to citizens asking them to foil “enemy plots.”
According to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran, at least 65 people had been killed as of Friday, 2,311 individuals had been arrested, and protests had been recorded at 512 locations in 180 cities. Time magazine reported Friday that more than 200 people have died in the protests.
A Western diplomat told POLITICO that reports of a higher death toll than what has currently been reported, citing NGOs, were “credible.” A spokesperson for the exiled opposition group NCRI said that based on initial assessments of the number of killed in smaller Iranian towns, it was likely that the death toll was substantially higher than could be formally confirmed.
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola Saturday evening called for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to be designated as a terrorist organization and for more sanctions to be imposed on the Iranian regime.
“Those braving the streets, those political prisoners still being detained, need more than just words, Europe can act,” Metsola said in a post on X. “As one step: by designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and by urgently further extending EU sanctions to all those individuals propping up the regime through repression, violence and murder.”
Metsola already had backed the protesters on Thursday — earning a rebuke from the Iranian Mission to the EU — and the European Union’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas called any violence against protesters “unacceptable.” Other MEPs echoed Metsola’s remarks, including German Green Hannah Neumann, who chairs the Parliament’s delegation for relations with Tehran. She described the protests as a “breaking point” for Iran.