Following the Iranian authorities’ deadly response to anti-government protests that peaked last month, Trump has threatened military action and ordered the dispatch of an aircraft carrier group to the Middle East.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday likened the recent protests to a “coup”, warning that a US attack would trigger a broad conflict.

“The Americans should know that if they start a war, this time it will be a regional war,” he said, telling Iranians they “should not be scared” of Trump’s rhetoric.

“They (rioters) attacked the police, government centres, IRGC centres, banks, and mosques, and burned the Holy Quran… It was like a coup,” Khamenei said, adding that “the coup was suppressed”.

Asked about the Iranian leader’s warning, Trump told reporters on Sunday: “Of course he is going to say that.

“Hopefully we’ll make a deal. If we don’t make a deal, then we’ll find out whether or not he was right,” he said.

The demonstrations in Iran began as an expression of discontent at the high cost of living, but grew into a mass anti-government movement that the country’s leaders have described as “riots” stoked by the United States and Israel.

Iranian authorities nonetheless ordered the release of detained 26-year-old protester Erfan Soltani on bail, his lawyer said on Sunday, after Washington warned he was on death row and threatened an attack if any anti-government demonstrators were executed.

He was arrested in January for what Iran’s judiciary said were charges of propaganda against Iran’s Islamic system and acting against national security.

Washington had warned he was due to be executed, though Tehran said he had never been sentenced to death and that the charges against him did not carry the death penalty.

As tensions heightened between Iran and the United States, Tehran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday said he was concerned about “miscalculations” but said he believed Trump was “wise enough to make the correct decision”.

He said Iran has lost trust in the United States as a negotiating partner, adding that some countries in the region were acting as intermediaries to rebuild trust.

“So I see the possibility of another talk if the US negotiation team follows what President Trump said: to come to a fair and equitable deal to ensure that there is no nuclear weapons,” he said in an interview with CNN.

‘Terrorist’ designations

Tehran has acknowledged thousands of deaths during the protests, and on Sunday the presidency published a list of 2,986 names out of the 3,117 that authorities said were killed in the unrest.

Of the total, 131 have yet to be identified but their details will be released soon, it said in a statement.

Authorities insist most were members of the security forces and innocent bystanders, attributing the violence to “terrorist acts”.

However, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said it has confirmed 6,842 deaths, mostly protesters.

The response prompted the European Union to list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation, with Iranian lawmakers retaliating on Sunday by slapping the same designation on European armies.

Lawmakers wore the green uniform of the Guards in a display of solidarity at the legislative session, where they chanted “Death to America”, “Death to Israel” and “Shame on you, Europe”, state television footage showed.

It remained unclear what immediate impact the decision would have.

The step matched similar classifications enacted by the United States, Canada and Australia.

Threats and dialogue

Firouzeh, a 43-year-old homemaker who declined to give her full name, said the recent tensions had left her “very worried and scared”.

“Lately, all I do is watch the news until I fall asleep. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night to check the updates,” she said.

IRGC official Ahmad Vahidi was quoted by the Mehr news agency as saying “enemies” sought to create a “war atmosphere”.

But Ali Larijani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Saturday: “Contrary to the hype of the contrived media war, structural arrangements for negotiations are progressing.”

Trump also confirmed that dialogue was taking place, but without withdrawing his earlier threats, adding “we’ll see what happens”.

The US president previously said he believed Iran would make a deal over its nuclear and missile programmes rather than face military action.

Tehran, meanwhile, has said it is ready for nuclear talks if its missile and defence capabilities are not on the agenda.

Former British government minister Peter Mandelson has resigned as a member of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party after new reports of his ties with disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein, the media reported on Sunday.

Mandelson, who was fired by Starmer as Britain’s ambassador to the United States last year after previous revelations about his connections to Epstein, said he did not wish to cause “further embarrassment” to Labour, the reports said.

“I have been further linked this weekend to the understandable furore surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, and I feel regretful and sorry about this,” Mandelson said in a letter to the Labour Party reported by the BBC and other news organisations, which Reuters was not immediately able to obtain.

Mandelson said he believed allegations about financial payments to him by Epstein, which appeared in British media based on files released by the US Justice Department, were false, and he would investigate them.

“While doing this, I do not wish to cause further embarrassment to the Labour Party, and I am therefore stepping down from membership of the party,” the letter said.

Mandelson was key to the Labour Party’s electoral success when Tony Blair was prime minister, starting in the 1990s.

He came under scrutiny last year after US lawmakers released documents, including a letter in which he called Epstein “my best pal”, leading to his dismissal as Britain’s envoy in Washington.

Mandelson also had a turbulent earlier career in domestic politics. In 1998, he quit as trade minister over a loan he received from a fellow minister to buy a house amid questions over a conflict of interest.

A second stint in the cabinet also ended in a resignation in 2001 when he was forced out over his alleged involvement in a passport scandal involving an Indian billionaire. He was later cleared of acting improperly.

Mandelson, a former European Union trade commissioner, is on leave of absence as a member of the upper house of Britain’s national parliament.

Separately, Starmer said on Saturday that Britain’s former Prince Andrew should testify before a US congressional committee, following new revelations about his links to Epstein.

• Liam Conejo Ramos, father escorted back to Minnesota by lawmaker.
• Federal judge had ordered their release from ICE detention in Texas.
• Democrats demand reforms after ICE operations and shootings.

Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father have returned to their home in a Minneapolis suburb after being detained by US immigration officers and held at a detention facility in Texas, a lawmaker said on Sunday.

A federal judge on Saturday ordered the release of Adrian Conejo Arias and his son, whom immigration officers detained during a Minnesota raid.

US Representative Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, wrote in a social media post that he picked them up on Saturday night at the detention facility and escorted them back to Minnesota on Sunday.

“Liam is now home. With his hat and his backpack,” Castro said. “We won’t stop until all children and families are home.”

A photo that went viral last month shows Liam wearing a blue bunny hat outside his house with federal agents standing nearby. 

He was one of four students detained by immigration officials in a Minneapolis suburb, according to the Columbia Heights Public School District.

The Ecuadorean boy and his father, who entered the United States legally as asylum applicants, had been held in a detention facility in Dilley, Texas.

US District Judge Fred Biery wrote in a ruling on Saturday that the case had its genesis in “the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatising children.”

Biery, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, cited the Constitution’s requirement that an arrest warrant must be based on a judge’s finding of probable cause of a crime. 

“The use of ‘administrative warrants’ issued by immigration officials is called the fox guarding the henhouse,” he wrote.

Democrats have called for reforms after large-scale enforcement operations in Minnesota and other states, following two deadly shootings of US citizens in Minneapolis involving ICE agents. 

Those demands by Democratic lawmakers include mandatory body cameras, the end to roving patrols and halting the use of face masks.

Funding for the Homeland Security Department has been held up as Republicans and Democrats continue negotiating over a DHS bill. 

“We’ll be talking about that in the near future,” President Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

Some Republican mayors also see a need for reforms. “We’re generally encouraged that the administration seems to be exploring that pivot,” Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

Mayors are “caught in a little bit of an impossible situation” with federal immigration enforcers’ presence in cities, Holt said, adding events in Minneapolis threaten to erode the trust authorities have built over time with residents in cities.

Holt spoke the day after Trump ordered DHS to refrain from dealing with protesters unless federal property is threatened or local officials request help.