{"id":687917,"date":"2026-01-11T01:26:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T01:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/687917\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T01:26:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T01:26:13","slug":"von-der-leyen-condemns-violent-crackdown-on-iranian-protesters-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/687917\/","title":{"rendered":"Von der Leyen condemns violent crackdown on Iranian protesters\u00a0 \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

The anti-government demonstrations continued on Saturday, amid reports of overwhelmed hospitals<\/a> and an appeal<\/a> by the Iranian military to citizens asking them to foil \u201cenemy plots.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to<\/a> 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<\/a> Friday that more than 200 people have died in the protests.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Western diplomat told POLITICO that reports of a higher death toll than what has currently been reported, citing NGOs, were \u201ccredible.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola Saturday evening called for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to be designated as a terrorist organization<\/a> and for more sanctions to be imposed on the Iranian regime.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose braving the streets, those political prisoners still being detained, need more than just words, Europe can act,\u201d Metsola said in a post on X<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cAs one step: by\u00a0designating 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Metsola already had backed the protesters on Thursday \u2014 earning a rebuke<\/a> from the Iranian Mission to the EU \u2014 and the European Union\u2019s top diplomat Kaja Kallas called<\/a> any violence against protesters \u201cunacceptable.\u201d Other MEPs echoed Metsola\u2019s remarks, including German Green Hannah Neumann, who chairs the Parliament\u2019s delegation for relations with Tehran. She described the protests as a \u201cbreaking point\u201d for Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The anti-government demonstrations continued on Saturday, amid reports of overwhelmed hospitals and an appeal by the Iranian military…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[32,34,2000,299,5187,1699,1945,4582,774,2596,807,2820,839,2597,31621,49,1220],"class_list":{"0":"post-687917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-emmanuel-macron","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-friedrich-merz","15":"tag-human-rights","16":"tag-iran","17":"tag-kaja-kallas","18":"tag-keir-starmer","19":"tag-marco-rubio","20":"tag-middle-east","21":"tag-military","22":"tag-roberta-metsola","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115873866336849758","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}