By Parisa Hafezi and Andrew Mills
DUBAI/DOHA, Jan 14 (Reuters) – The United States is withdrawing some personnel from bases in the Middle East, a U.S. official said on Wednesday, after a senior Iranian official said Tehran had warned neighbors it would hit American bases if Washington strikes.
With Iran’s leadership trying to put down the worst domestic unrest the Islamic Republic has ever faced, Tehran is seeking to deter U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to intervene on behalf of anti-government protesters.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States was withdrawing some personnel from key bases in the region as a precaution given heightened regional tensions.
Three diplomats said some personnel had already been advised to leave the main U.S. air base in the region in Qatar, although there were no immediate signs of a large-scale evacuation of troops, as took place in the hours before an Iranian missile attack last year.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene in support of protesters in Iran, where thousands of people have been reported killed in a crackdown on the protests against clerical rule.
Iran and its Western foes have both described the unrest, which began two weeks ago as demonstrations against dire economic conditions and rapidly escalated in recent days, as the most violent since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that installed Iran’s system of clerical rule.
An Iranian official has said more than 2,000 people have died. A rights group put the toll at more than 2,600.
Iran “had never faced this volume of destruction”, Armed Forces Chief of Staff Abdolrahim Mousavi said on Wednesday, blaming foreign enemies. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot described “the most violent repression in Iran’s contemporary history”.
ISRAELI ASSESSMENT SAYS TRUMP HAS DECIDED TO INTERVENE
According to an Israeli assessment, Trump has decided to intervene, although the scope and timing of this action remains unclear, an Israeli official said.
The three diplomats told Reuters that some personnel had been advised to leave the U.S. military’s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar by Wednesday evening.
One of the diplomats described the move as a “posture change” rather than an “ordered evacuation”. There was no sign of troops being moved off the base to a nearby soccer stadium and shopping mall, as took place last June in the hours before Iran targeted the base with missiles in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes.
The U.S. embassy in Doha had no immediate comment and Qatar’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Iranian authorities have accused the United States and Israel of fomenting the unrest, carried out by people it calls terrorists.
IRAN ASKS REGIONAL STATES TO PREVENT A U.S. ATTACK
Trump has openly threatened to intervene in Iran for days, without giving specifics.
In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, Trump vowed “very strong action” if Iran executes protesters. He also urged Iranians on Tuesday to keep protesting and take over institutions, declaring “help is on the way”.
The senior Iranian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tehran had asked U.S. allies in the region to prevent Washington from attacking Iran.
“Tehran has told regional countries, from Saudi Arabia and UAE to Turkey, that U.S. bases in those countries will be attacked” if the U.S. targets Iran, the official said.
Direct contacts between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff had been suspended, the official added.
The United States has forces across the region including the forward headquarters of its Central Command at Al Udeid in Qatar and the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
GOVERNMENT DOES NOT SEEM ON VERGE OF COLLAPSE, WESTERN OFFICIAL SAYS
The flow of information from inside Iran has been hampered by an internet blackout.
U.S.-based HRANA rights group said it had so far verified the deaths of 2,403 protesters and 147 government-affiliated individuals, dwarfing tolls from previous waves of protests crushed by the authorities in 2022 and 2009.
The government’s prestige was severely damaged by a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign in June – joined by the U.S. – that followed setbacks for Iran’s regional allies in Lebanon and Syria. European countries triggered the restoration of U.N. sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program, worsening an economic crisis.
The unrest on such a scale had caught the authorities off guard at a vulnerable time, but it did not appear that the government faced imminent collapse, and its security apparatus was still in control, one Western official said.
The authorities have sought to project images showing they retain public support. Iranian state TV broadcast footage of large funeral processions for people killed in the unrest in Tehran, Isfahan and Bushehr, and other cities. People waved flags and pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and held aloft signs with anti-riot slogans.
President Masoud Pezeshkian, an elected figure whose power is subordinate to that of Khamenei, told a cabinet meeting that as long as the government had popular support, “all the enemies’ efforts against the country will come to nothing”.
State media reported that the head of Iran’s top security body, Ali Larijani, had spoken to the foreign minister of Qatar and Araqchi had spoken to his Emirati and Turkish counterparts.
Araqchi told UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed that “calm has prevailed” and Iranians were determined to defend their sovereignty and security from foreign interference.
Visiting a Tehran prison where arrested protesters are being held, Iran’s chief justice said speed in judging and penalizing those “who beheaded or burned people” was critical to ensuring such events do not happen again.
HRANA reported 18,137 arrests so far.
Hengaw, an Iranian Kurdish rights group, has reported a 26-year-old man, Erfan Soltani, arrested in connection with protests in the city of Karaj, was to be executed on Wednesday. The group said on Wednesday it was not able to confirm whether the sentence had been carried out.
(Reporting by Elwely Elwelly and Jana Choukeir in Dubai, Bassam Masoud in Doha, John Irish in Paris, Lili Bayer in Brussels, Bo Erickson in Detroit, Susan Heavey, Joey Roulette and Doina Chiacu in Washington, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Bhargav Acharya in TorontoWriting by Tom PerryEditing by Peter Graff and Frances Kerry)
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