Iran’s foreign minister said on Monday the Islamic republic is ready for both war and talks after repeated threats from US President Donald Trump to intervene militarily over a crackdown on protests that activists fear has killed hundreds.Over two weeks of protests initially sparked by economic grievances have turned into one of the biggest challenges yet to the theocratic system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution that ousted the shah.In a sign of the severity of the crisis, the authorities have imposed an internet blackout that has now lasted more than three-and-a-half days and that activists say is aimed at masking the extent of the deadly crackdown.Seeking to regain the initiative, the government was looking to fill streets nationwide with rallies backing the Islamic republic. Trump said Sunday that Iran’s leadership under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in power since 1989 and now 86, had called him seeking “to negotiate” after he repeatedly threatened to intervene militarily if Tehran killed protesters.”The Islamic Republic of Iran is not seeking war but is fully prepared for war,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told a conference of foreign ambassadors in Tehran broadcast by state television. “We are also ready for negotiations but these negotiations should be fair, with equal rights and based on mutual respect.”Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said a channel of communication is open between Araghchi and Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff despite the lack of diplomatic relations.”Messages are exchanged whenever necessary,” he said, noting that while the United States has no diplomatic presence in Iran, its interests are represented by the Swiss embassy.Meanwhile, the foreign minister of Oman, which has on occasion acted as a mediator, met Araghchi in Tehran on Saturday. Trump, who has threatened new military action after the US backed Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in June, said Tehran had indicated its willingness to talk. “The leaders of Iran called” yesterday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, adding that “a meeting is being set up… They want to negotiate”.He added, however, that “we may have to act before a meeting”.- Soaring toll -Iran’s shutdown of the internet has now lasted more than 84 hours, said monitor Netblocks. The blackout has severely affected the ability of Iranians to post videos of the mass protests that have rocked big cities since Thursday.A video circulating on Sunday showed dozens of bodies accumulating outside a morgue south of Tehran amid fears the toll from a crackdown on the protests could amount to hundreds of people or even higher.The footage, geolocated by AFP to Kahrizak, showed bodies wrapped in black bags, with what appeared to be grieving relatives searching for loved ones.The Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR) said it confirmed the killing of at least 192 protesters but that the actual toll could be much higher.”Unverified reports indicate that at least several hundreds, and according to some sources, more than 2,000 people may have been killed,” said IHR.More than 2,600 protesters have been arrested, IHR estimated.The People’s Mujahedin (MEK) opposition group, which is banned in Iran, said that according to its sources inside the country more than 3,000 people have been killed.Iranian state media has said dozens of members of the security forces have been killed, with their funerals turning into large pro-government rallies.State outlets were at pains to present a picture of calm returning, broadcasting images of smooth-flowing traffic. Tehran Governor Mohammad-Sadegh Motamedian insisted in televised comments that “the number of protests is decreasing”. With the government declaring three days of national mourning for victims of what it has termed “riots”, state television broadcast images of pro-Islamic republic rallies beginning in several cities with a march in Tehran expected later Monday.- ‘Stand with the people’ -Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of Iran’s ousted shah, urged Iran’s security forces and government workers to join the protests against the authorities.”Employees of state institutions, as well as members of the armed and security forces, have a choice: stand with the people and become allies of the nation, or choose complicity with the murderers of the people,” he said in a social media post.He also urged protesters to replace the flags outside Iranian embassies. “The time has come for them to be adorned with Iran’s national flag,” he said.The ceremonial, pre-revolution flag has become an emblem of the global rallies that have mushroomed in support of Iran’s demonstrators. In London, protesters over the weekend swapped out the Iranian embassy flag, hoisting in its place a banner featuring a Persian lion used under the shah. The Iranian foreign ministry said it had summoned the British ambassador to Tehran over the incident.

Barham Salih has known torture and the wrenching loss of exile. Four decades after his own ordeal, he has taken the helm of the UN refugee agency as it grapples with a funding shortfall and ever-rising needs.A former Iraqi president, Salih, 65, became the first former head of state to run the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) at the start of the year. “It is a profound moral and legal responsibility,” Salih told AFP during his first trip in the new role — to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya.”I know the pain of losing a home, losing your friends,” he said.The Kakuma refugee camp, which Salih visited on Sunday, is east Africa’s second largest, hosting roughly 300,000 people from South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda and Burundi. It has been in place since 1992. The world “should not allow this to continue”, Salih said, praising a new initiative by Kenya to turn its camps into economic hubs. “We should not only protect refugees… but also enable them to have more durable solutions,” he said, while adding: “The better way is to have peace established in their own countries… nowhere is nicer than home.”- ‘Electric shocks, beating’ -The son of a judge and a women’s rights activist, Salih was born in 1960 in Sulaymaniyah, a stronghold of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which sought self-determination for Iraq’s Kurds.He went into exile in Iran in 1974, spending a year at a school for refugees. As a teenager in 1979, back in Iraq and already a member of the PUK, he was arrested twice by former dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime.”I was released after 43 days after having suffered torture, electric shocks, beating,” he said.Upon release, he still managed to rank among Iraq’s top three high school students, according to a former colleague, before fleeing with his family to Britain where he earned a degree in computer engineering and a doctorate.Salih has “real experience of exile… He brings a personal perspective of displacement, which is very important,” Filippo Grandi, his predecessor at UNHCR, told AFP last month.Salih went on to a successful career in Iraqi Kurdistan and Iraq’s federal government after Hussein’s overthrow in 2003, holding the largely ceremonial role of president from 2018 to 2022. – ‘Serious budget cuts’ -Refugee numbers have doubled to 117 million in the past decade, the UNHCR said in June, but funding has dropped sharply, especially since Donald Trump returned to the White House.UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently praised Salih’s experience as a “crisis negotiator and architect of national reforms” at a time when the agency faces “very serious challenges”.”We have had very serious budget cuts last year. A lot of staff have been reduced,” Salih told AFP. “But we have to understand, we have to adapt,” he said, calling for “more efficiency and accountability” while also insisting the international community meets its “legal and moral obligations to help”. burs-jcp/mnk/er/kjm