U.S. President Donald Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its crackdown on protesters in nationwide demonstrations that activists said on Monday (January 12, 2026) had left at least 599 people dead.

Iran had no direct reaction to Mr. Trump’s comments, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — travelled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear programme and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defence.

FOLLOW | Iran protests LIVE updates

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking to foreign diplomats in Tehran, insisted “the situation has come under total control” in remarks that blamed Israel and the US for the violence, without offering evidence.

“That’s why the demonstrations turned violent and bloody to give an excuse to the American president to intervene,” Araghchi said, in comments carried by Al Jazeera. The Qatar-funded network has been allowed to report live from inside Iran, despite the internet being shut off.

However, Mr. Araghchi said Iran was “open to diplomacy.” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said that a channel to the US remained open, but talks needed to be “based on the acceptance of mutual interests and concerns, not a negotiation that is one-sided, unilateral and based on dictation.”

Meanwhile, pro-government demonstrators flooded the streets on Monday in support of the theocracy, a show of force after days of protests directly challenging the rule of 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian state television aired chants from the crowd, which appeared to number in the tens of thousands, who shouted “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”

Iran’s attorney general has said prosecutors will levy such charges against protesters, which carry the death penalty.

Trump acknowledges proposal for talks

Mr. Trump and his national security team have been weighing a range of potential responses against Iran, including cyberattacks and direct strikes by the U.S. or Israel, according to two people familiar with internal White House discussions who weren’t authorised to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The military is looking at it, and we’re looking at some very strong options,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday night. Asked about Iran’s threats of retaliation, he said: “If they do that, we will hit them at levels that they’ve never been hit before.”

Mr. Trump said that his administration was in talks to set up a meeting with Tehran, but cautioned that he may have to act first as reports of the death toll in Iran mount and the government continues to arrest protesters.

“I think they’re tired of being beat up by the United States,” Mr. Trump said. “Iran wants to negotiate.”

Iran, through the country’s parliamentary speaker, warned Sunday that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if Washington uses force to protect demonstrators.

More than 10,600 people also have been detained over the two weeks of protests, said the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous unrest in recent years and gave the death toll. It relies on supporters in Iran crosschecking information. It said 510 of the dead were protesters and 89 were security force members.

With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the toll. Iran’s government hasn’t offered overall casualty figures.

Those abroad fear the information blackout is emboldening hard-liners within Iran’s security services to launch a violent crackdown. Protesters flooded Tehran’s streets and its second-largest city on Saturday night into Sunday morning. Online videos purported to show more demonstrations Sunday night into Monday, with a Tehran official acknowledging them in state media.

At 2 p.m. on Monday, Iranian state television showed images of demonstrators thronging Tehran toward Enghelab Square, or “Islamic Revolution” Square in the capital. It had been airing statements all morning from Iranian government, security and religious leaders to attend the demonstration.

It called the rally an “Iranian uprising against American-Zionist terrorism,” without addressing the underlying anger in the country over the nation’s ailing economy. State television aired images of such demonstrations around the country, trying to signal it had overcome the protests.

Fear pervades Iran’s capital

In Tehran, a witness told the AP that the streets were empty at the sunset call to prayers each night. By the Isha, or nighttime prayer, the streets are deserted.

Part of that stems from the fear of getting caught in the crackdown. Police sent the public a text message that warned: “Given the presence of terrorist groups and armed individuals in some gatherings last night and their plans to cause death, and the firm decision to not tolerate any appeasement and to deal decisively with the rioters, families are strongly advised to take care of their youth and teenagers.”

Another text, which claimed to come from the intelligence arm of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, also directly warned people not to take part in demonstrations.

The witness spoke on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing crackdown.

The demonstrations began December 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at more than 1.4 million to USD 1, as iran’s economy is squeezed by international sanctions in part levied over its nuclear programme. The protests intensified and grew into calls directly challenging Iran’s theocracy.

Video shows corpses outside capital

Meanwhile, video circulating online purports to show dozens of bodies in a morgue on the outskirts of Iran’s capital.

People with knowledge of the facility and the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said Monday that the video shows the Kahrizak Forensic Medicine Centre.

In the footage, people are seen walking by dozens of bodies in bags laid out in a large room, attempting to identify those there. In some cases, bodies can be seen lying outside on blue tarps. A large truck can be seen in part of the footage.

Published – January 13, 2026 05:31 am IST

U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Washington:

The United States still believes that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon despite Tehran’s recent strategic setbacks, including Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leaders and two largely unsuccessful attempts to attack Israel, two US officials told Reuters.

The comments from a senior Biden administration official and a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) added to public remarks earlier this week by CIA Director William Burns, who said the United States had not seen any evidence Iran’s leader had reversed his 2003 decision to suspend the weaponization program.

“We assess that the Supreme Leader has not made a decision to resume the nuclear weapons program that Iran suspended in 2003,” said the ODNI spokesperson, referring to Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The intelligence assessment could help explain US opposition to any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program in retaliation for a ballistic missile attack that Tehran carried out last week.

President Joe Biden said after that attack he would not support an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites, but did not explain why he had reached that conclusion. His remarks drew fierce criticism from Republicans, including former President Donald Trump.

US officials have long acknowledged that an attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program might only delay the country’s efforts to develop a nuclear bomb and could even strengthen Tehran’s resolve to do so.

“We’re all watching this space very carefully,” the Biden administration official said.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment but Tehran has repeatedly denied ever having had a nuclear weapons program.

Key Iran ally weakened

In the past weeks, Israel’s military has inflicted heavy losses on Hezbollah, the most powerful member of the Iran-backed network known as the Axis of Resistance. The group’s setbacks have included the killing of its leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike last month.

The weakening of a key Iranian ally has prompted some experts to speculate that Tehran may restart its efforts to acquire a nuclear bomb to protect itself.

Beth Sanner, a former US deputy director of national intelligence, said the risk of Khamenei reversing his 2003 religious dictum against nuclear weapons is “higher now than it has been” and that if Israel were to strike nuclear facilities Tehran would likely move ahead with building a nuclear weapon.

That would still take time, however.

“They can’t get a weapon in a day. It will take months and months and months,” said Sanner, now a fellow with the German Marshall Fund.

Iran is now enriching uranium to up to 60% fissile purity, close to the 90% of weapons grade, at two sites, and in theory it has enough material enriched to that level, if enriched further, for almost four bombs, according to a yardstick of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog.

The expansion in Iran’s enrichment program has reduced the so-called breakout time it would need to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb to “a week or a little more,” according to Burns, from more than a year under a 2015 accord that Trump pulled out of when president.Actually making a bomb with that material would take longer. How long is less clear and the subject of debate.

Possible Israeli attack

Israel has not yet disclosed what it will target in retaliation for Iran’s attack last week with more than 180 ballistic missiles, which largely failed thanks to interceptions by Israeli air defenses as well as by the US military.

The United States has been privately urging Israel to calibrate its response to avoid triggering a broader war in the Middle East, officials say, with Biden publicly voicing his opposition to a nuclear attack and concerns about a strike on Iran’s energy infrastructure.

Israel, however, views Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat.

The conflicts in the Middle East between Israel and Iran and Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen have become campaign issues ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election, with Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, positioning themselves as pro-Israel.

Speaking at a campaign event last week, Trump mocked Biden for opposing an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, saying: “That’s the thing you wanna hit, right?”

Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence officer and government official, said Iran still had space to compensate for setbacks dealt to its proxies and missile force without having to resort to developing a nuclear warhead.

“The Iranians have to recalculate what’s next. I don’t think at this point they will rush to either develop or boost the (nuclear) program toward military capacity,” he said.

“They will look around to find what maneuvering space they can move around in.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)