Iran, Time: 'Over 30,000 dead in 48 hours of repression'

Only over the two days of 8 and 9 January "more than 30,000 people may have been killed on the streets of Iran". The Time magazine writes this, citing two senior Iranian Health Ministry officials covered by anonymity. The sources reported that on those two days, a Thursday and a Friday, stocks of body bags ran out and ambulances were replaced by eighteen-wheelers. The estimate of 30,304 dead, writes the Time, does not take into account the wounded admitted to military hospitals who subsequently died, or casualties in areas where no balance sheet was provided.

In the meantime, one wonders whether Iran's Supreme Guide is still in place. "Ali Khamenei is hiding in an underground shelter in Tehran", several newspapers write, almost all of them citing the website Iran International, which is indicated as being very close to the Iranian opposition. This is not necessarily the case. The Iranian consul in Mumbai rejects this idea: he claims thatKhamenei has 'security personnel to protect him' but that one should not 'think that he is hiding in a bunker or shelter'.

In all this, tensions between the US and Iran remain very high. And the hypothesis that Ayatollah Khamenei was hiding in an armoured bunker had already emerged last June, at another time of great tension: during the '12-day war' and the raids by Israeli and American forces on Iranian nuclear sites.

US President Donald Trump continues to threaten. But he does so with his usual diplomatic twists and turns. On the one hand, he appears to ease his threats of an imminent attack against Iran, claiming that the regime has halted the executions of 'more than 830 people' since the protests erupted in December and which the police are accused of repressing with the most brutal violence (according to the human rights NGO Hrana, the dead numbered at least 5,002, including 4,716 protesters).

On the other hand, he thunders on, claiming that Washington is 'keeping an eye on Iran' and that 'a large fleet is heading in that direction'. "We'll see what happens", the White House tenant declared a few days ago. According to two US officials interviewed by the New York Times, in addition to the aircraft carrier Lincoln,the Pentagon reportedly ordered last week to send three missile launchers and a dozen F-15 fighters to the Middle East.