The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday released a statement expressing support for the people of Iran and condemning what it described as violent repression of peaceful protesters.
“Congress and the American people stand with the resilient people of Iran in their aspiration for a free and prosperous future. We condemn in the strongest possible terms the reported killing of thousands of peaceful protestors for exercising their right to free speech," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch and Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen said.
"We demand that the government of Iran immediately cease suppression of its people. The future of Iran should be decided by the Iranian people," the statement added.
US Senator Tom Cotton on Tuesday posted messages on X criticizing Iran and calling attention to what he described as violence and atrocities against the Iranian people.
“As Iran slaughters its own citizens by the thousand, remember: this is a terrorist regime that has killed hundreds of Americans and tried to assassinate Americans on US soil," Republican Senator of Arkansans said.
"The world needs to see the atrocities being perpetrated by the Iranian regime on their people," he also added.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday said the United States could take “very strong action” if Iran executes protesters, adding there was “a lot of help on the way” for Iranians.
“There’s a lot of help on the way and in different forms, including economic help from our standpoint,” Trump said in an interview with CBS News.
Trump said the United States had already eliminated Iran’s nuclear capacity and accused Iranian authorities of killing protesters in large numbers, though he said casualty figures remained unclear.
“Nobody’s been able to give us accurate numbers about how many people they’ve killed,” he said. “It looks like it could be a pretty substantial number.”
Pressed on the end goal, he added: “The end game is to win. I like winning.”
US Senator Lindsey Graham said he expects US help for Iranian protesters “soon,” adding the ongoing unrest as a push to replace the country’s current leadership.
“They don’t want to live in a country where a 16‑year‑old girl can be killed for not wearing the headscarf,” Graham told Iran International in an interview on Tuesday. “Help is on the way.”
“People are being killed, I think, by the thousands. Donald J. Trump is not Barack Obama. When he says help is on the way, he means it to everyone out in the streets risking your life. Your children and their children’s children will benefit from your bravery,” the Republican senator from South Carolina said.
It is the Islamic Republic as envisioned by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei: no internet, no social media, hundreds of national and local newspapers shuttered, and mobile phones rendered largely useless.
The darkness is deliberate. It is enforced to prevent protesters from communicating and organizing—and to conceal the crimes committed to crush them when they do.
Iran International on Tuesday put the death toll from the crackdown at around 12,000, vowing in a statement that the mass killing “will not be buried in silence.”
With nearly all communication channels severed, Khamenei remains one of the few figures whose website continues to function. State television—a network of more than 30 channels—is still broadcasting the image he wants the world to see.
The same is true of a handful of state-aligned news agencies, including Fars, Tasnim, and Mehr, all controlled by the Revolutionary Guards or the Organization for Islamic Propagation.
Although Iran’s national intranet has partially resumed after several days of shutdown, even state television has struggled to maintain its broadcasts following the severing of international internet links.
Despite those limitations, state TV aired footage promoting a tightly stage-managed pro-government rally in one of Tehran’s smallest squares, a space that can barely hold 3,000 people.
Internet experts say a small number of X users inside Iran have been selectively allowed to post content supporting government narratives. Limited Starlink access also exists, but analysts warn that the sporadic signal means foreign media remain largely blind to developments across most of the country.
As of Tuesday evening in Tehran, the government had not responded to calls from the United Nations secretary-general and European Union officials urging it to restore communication lines.
Meanwhile, social media posts describe security forces raiding homes and confiscating Starlink terminals, satellite dishes, computers, and mobile phones — part of a broader effort to prevent Iranians from accessing independent reporting or sending information abroad.
With the blackout, censorship, and signal jamming, foreign-based Persian-language media—now the primary source of information for many Iranians—may be forced to revive shortwave radio broadcasting. It would represent a step backward in media technology, but perhaps the only way to move forward in reaching a silenced population.
Shukriya Bradost, an Iran analyst based in Washington, wrote on X on Tuesday that while protesters stand “empty-handed against a regime that answers them with bullets,” no significant defections appear to have occurred within the military.
“Starlink and outside reporting no longer have the impact they once did,” she wrote, because the world already knows what is happening in Iran. If any action is to be taken, she concluded, “the time is now, not later.”
