On Monday evening U.S. President Donald Trump announced 25% import tariffs on products from any country doing business with Iran – a major oil exporter. Trump has also said more military action is among options he is weighing to punish Iran over the crackdown, saying earlier this month “we are locked and loaded”.

Underscoring the international uncertainty over what comes next in Iran, which has been one of the dominant powers across the Middle East for decades, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he believed the government would fall.
“I assume that we are now witnessing the final days and weeks of this regime,” he said on Tuesday, adding that if it had to maintain power through violence, “it is effectively at its end”.

About 2,000 people including security personnel have been killed in protests in Iran, an Iranian official said on Tuesday, the first time authorities have acknowledged the high death toll from an intense crackdown on two weeks of nationwide unrest.
The Iranian official, speaking to Reuters, said that people he called terrorists were behind the deaths of both protesters and security personnel. The official, who declined to be named, did not give a breakdown of who had been killed.

Reuters report

Other pro-West news networks estimate the death toll at 12000.

US President Donald Trump has urged Iranians to “keep protesting” and “take over” institutions in the country, saying he has cancelled “all meetings” with Iranian officials.’

Help is on the way,’ Trump tells Iranians as he urges them to keep protesting – Al Jazeera report.