Iran protests newest: Trump says Ayatollah is seeking to flee and pledges to ‘hit them hard’ if protesters harmed

US President Donald Trump said he had put Iran “on notice” following widespread protests across the country.

“There’s so many people protesting. Nobody’s ever seen anything like what’s happening right now, but I have put Iran on notice that if they start shooting at them — these people are totally unarmed people, and they love their country,” Trump told Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday.

“They want something to happen. Look at their country. They’ve gone back 150 years.

“But I’ve warned them that if they do anything bad to these people, we’re going to hit them very hard.I’ve said it very loud and very clear, that’s what we’re going to do.”

President Donald Trump has suggested that Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is planning on fleeing the country amidst unrest.

He said Khamenei is “looking to go someplace” when asked about reports he could escape to Russia and said that the country was on the “verge of collapsing” on Thursday.

Protesters have chanted “death to Khamenei” after the son of the toppled former leader Shah Reza Pahlavi, called for citizens to take to the streets.

Iranian officials told the New York Times that the government had been “thrust into survival mode”. Last week reports emerged that Khamenei could flee to Russia.

Iranian authorities have blamed “terrorist agents” from the US and Israel for the unrest. The Ayatollah called protesters “saboteurs” and said they were “ruining their own streets on make the President of another country happy”.

US president Donald Trump warned that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters” the US “will come to their rescue,” threats that acquired fresh resonance following the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a long-standing ally of Tehran, by American troops.

“We’re watching it very closely,” Mr Trump said on Sunday. “If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States.”

The country has been reeling from a 12-day conflict in June, initiated by Israel, which saw US forces bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. A widening economic crisis has seen the population struggling with an annual inflation rate of 40 per cent.

Economic hardship has deepened significantly since September, when the United Nations reimposed sanctions on the country due to its atomic programme.

This has plunged Iran’s rial currency into freefall, now exchanging at more than 1.4m to $1. Concurrently, Tehran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance” – a coalition of countries and militant groups backed by the capital – has been significantly weakened since the onset of the Israel–Hamas conflict in 2023.

The president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, has hit out at the EU’s Iran Mission amid ongoing protests in the country.

On Thursday, the Iran Mission wrote that it rejected the “interventionist statements” made by the EU President.

It wrote: “Their hypocrisy and double-standard approach towards rights and principles is disgusting.”

Metsola responded on X/Twitter on Friday, writing: “Must be nice to be able to tweet from Europe and be able to use the Internet freely to publicly disagree with leaders, without being arrested, beaten or having the country’s telecommunications disabled.

“That’s the sort of thing people in Iran’s streets are asking for…”

Several flights between Dubai and Iranian cities, Tehran, Shiraz and Mashhad, have been cancelled amid political arrest across the country.

A flydubai spokesperson said that flights to Iran had been cancelled and that the airline “will continue to monitor the situation” and revise its flight schedule accordingly in a statement on Friday.

It did not give a reason for the disruption. Two flights between Doha, Qatar and Tehran scheduled for Friday had been cancelled. Turkish media reported Turkish Airlines cancelled 17 flights. Pegasus Airlines also cancelled flights to Iranian cities on Friday.

Scenes in Iran resemble a “war zone” in the aftermath of widespread protests in Tehran, according to local media.

“This looks like a war zone – all the shops have been destroyed,” said a star journalist in front of the fires on Shariati Street in the Caspian Sea port of Rasht.

Images emerging from the country show burning buses, cars and motorbikes as well as fires at metro stations and banks.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called President Donald Trump “arrogant”, saying he would be “overthrown” in his first public address since protests erupted across Iran.

He said protesters are “ruining their own streets on make the President of another country happy”.

Khamenei insisted the Islamic Republic would not “back down”.

“The Islamic Republic will not tolerate mercenaries working for foreign powers,” he continued.

“To President Trump: focus on the problems in your own country.”

He added: “Everyone should know that the Islamic Republic came to power with the blood of hundreds of thousands of honorable people, and it will not back down in the face of saboteurs.”

At least 38 people have been killed with more than 2,200 arrested, according to the agency, which relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting.

Understanding the scale of the protests has been difficult. Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations.

Online videos offer shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire. Journalists in general in Iran also face limits on reporting such as requiring permission to travel around the country, as well as the threat of harassment or arrest by authorities.

But the protests do not appear to be stopping, even after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said “rioters must be put in their place.”

Footage and images from Iran, which is facing a blackout, shows disruption across the city of Tehran as demonstrators demand regime change.