US President Donald Trump has said the US government gave weapons to Iranian rebels and demonstrators during massive anti-government demonstrations in December and January, when thousands of people died in a crackdown by government forces.
In a Sunday morning phone interview with Fox News’ Trey Yingst, the president said the United States was directly involved in efforts to destabilize and overthrow the Iranian government, as American negotiators were negotiating with senior Iranian officials in Europe in the weeks before the U.S. and Israel launched attacks across Iran on Feb. 28.
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The US-Israel war against Iran enters its 38th day, with at least 2,076 people dead and 26,000 injured in Iran.
“President Trump told me that the United States sent guns to protesters in Iran,” Yingst reported on Fox News Channel.
“He said to me, ‘We sent them a lot of guns. We sent them to the Kurds.'” And the president said he thinks the Kurds held them back. He went on to say: “We sent guns to the protesters, many of them.”
President Trump has often framed his decision to attack Iran alongside Israel as partly inspired by his desire to “liberate” Iranians from the Islamic Republic’s control after Iran cracked down on protests in January.
But his comments against Yingst could lend weight to Iran’s own claims that the protests were not organized but were instigated by “foreign-backed terrorists.” Still, analysts warned that Trump’s frequently changing statements about Iran meant it was difficult to know for sure the extent of the U.S. involvement in the protests.
Here’s what we know:
What happened during the protests?
The demonstrations began on December 28 among shopkeepers in central Tehran, angry over the worsening economic crisis and the devaluation of the Iranian rial.
They soon spread to cities large and small across the country, turning into nationwide demonstrations that brought hundreds of thousands of people of all ages to the streets. By then, some protesters had begun demanding changes in the government.
Human rights groups say Iranian authorities particularly cracked down on protests on January 8 and 9. Thousands of people, mostly young Iranians, were reportedly killed by gunshots and stabbings, and tens of thousands of others were arrested.
Amnesty International said Iranian authorities also shut down the internet “to cover up the crime” and the country was left in an information blackout for several days.
Mai Soto, the UN special rapporteur on Iran, said at least 5,000 people were killed and the actual death toll could reach 20,000.
At least four people have since been executed in connection with the protests, and several more are on death row, according to Amnesty International.
The protests were the largest since women’s rights demonstrations in September 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody. She was arrested for not properly covering her hair. Amini’s death sparked nationwide demonstrations. Authorities are then suspected of opening fire on demonstrators, arresting some of them, and eventually executing them.
What did the Iranian government say?
In a rare acknowledgment on January 17, then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said “thousands” of people had died in the protests, after days of officially dodging casualty figures as bodies piled up.
But Khamenei insisted that the Iranian military was not responsible for the deaths, but that groups backed by the United States and Israel had hijacked the economic protests.
Khamenei accused President Trump of being a “criminal” and personally involved in the incitement.
Tehran has long blamed its enemies, the United States and Israel, for fueling the crisis in the country, but this time it claimed American involvement was deeper than usual.
“Those associated with Israel and the United States have caused massive damage and thousands of people have died,” Khamenei said in the protests that have rocked Iran for more than two weeks, state media quoted him as saying.
“The recent anti-Iranian uprising was different in that the president of the United States was personally involved,” he added.
Iranian authorities later admitted that the death toll was around 5,000, including at least 500 security personnel killed by “terrorists and armed insurgents.”
An anonymous Iranian official told Reuters that most of the violence and deaths occurred in Kurdish territory in northwest Iran. The area has long been a stronghold of Kurdish separatists, and unrest is often recorded.
What did the U.S. government say about the protests?
About a week into the crisis, President Trump warned Iran not to target protesters.
“If Iran continues to shoot and violently kill peaceful protesters, as it customarily does, the United States will come to their aid,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, without elaborating on what “relief” would look like.
“We are locked, loaded and ready to go,” the president added.
And on January 13, he wrote to protesters in Iran: “Help is on the way.” He urged them to “take over their organization” while issuing threats to Iranian authorities if protesters were killed.
President Trump’s warning to Tehran came after the United States bombed three of Iran’s most important nuclear facilities during Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in June. At the time, President Trump said the attack had “annihilated” Tehran’s nuclear capabilities. Iran launched retaliatory attacks on US military facilities stationed at bases in Qatar.
After confirming on February 28 that the United States and Israel had launched an attack on Iran, President Trump said the main purpose of the war was to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons.
He also linked the action to the protests in January.
President Trump said the Iranian government had “killed tens of thousands of its own citizens in the streets as they participated in the protests.” He said the Iranians, who had been asking for U.S. intervention, now “give them what they want.”
Do President Trump’s actions and statements have an impact on Iranian rebels?
Several Iranian Kurdish groups on Sunday denied President Trump’s claims that he gave weapons to Kurds during protests in December and January.
Iranian Kurdish groups have long opposed the government in Tehran and called for self-determination. They share close ties with Iraqi Kurds, who fought successfully for a semi-autonomous region decades ago. Many operate along the Iraq-Iran border and in northern Iraq.
Long divided, some of Iran’s Kurdish groups united by forming a coalition days before the United States and Israel went to war.
The Iranian government launched attacks on Kurdish positions in Iraq in the first week after US media reported that some Kurdish opposition leaders were meeting with President Trump.
At the time, analysts speculated that the United States was seeking to support Iranian Kurds to occupy parts of Iran that border Iraq. The purpose could be to create a buffer zone through which invading Israeli or U.S. ground forces could enter from Iraq, they said.
But so far, neither Israel nor the United States has launched a ground attack. Opposition Democratic members of the U.S. Congress have voiced opposition to the war, and the Trump administration has particularly opposed sending ground troops to Iran, although it has not completely ruled it out.
On Sunday, a senior official from the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) told Iraqi broadcaster Rudaw that President Trump’s statements on Fox were false.
KDPI is one of the organizations that US media reported that Trump met with in March.
“These statements are baseless and we have not received any weapons,” Muhammad Nazif Qaderi was quoted as saying. “The weapons we have are 47 years old and were obtained on the battlefields of the Islamic Republic, and some were also purchased from the market.”
The official added that KDPI’s policy is “not to turn demonstrations into violence and use draconian methods. Rather, we believe that demands must be carried out in a peaceful and civil manner without the use of weapons.”
Another opposition group, the Komala Party, has also expressed denial.
Neil Quilliam, an Iran analyst at the British think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera that it was difficult to place much weight on Trump’s statements because of the frequent claims and counterclaims made by him and his administration.
“I would not be surprised if it were later revealed that the US provided support to protesters to encourage an insurrection. In fact, I expect they will do so,” the analyst said.
“But President Trump’s comments revealed nothing important and are likely more reflective of President Trump than anything else. His statement that the Kurds were storing weapons sounded more like sour grapes, because the Kurds refused to revolt now instead of pocketing arms supplies,” he added.
Still, the analyst said that Trump’s comments, even if they are throwaways, are likely to have an effect on the unity of the Iranian opposition and their goal of overthrowing the Iranian government.
