Iran’s top Sunni cleric voices concern over killings, backs right to protest

The head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, David Barnea, arrived in the United States on Friday for consultations on the situation in Iran, Axios reported citing an Israeli source and another person familiar with the matter.

The visit comes amid discussions between Washington and Israel over the protests in Iran and the possibility of US military action in response to Tehran’s crackdown, according to Axios.

Barnea is expected to meet US officials, including White House envoy Steve Witkoff, who has been handling a direct channel of communication with Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, the report said.

It was not immediately clear whether Barnea would meet President Donald Trump during his visit.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Friday he had spoken with the European Union’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas and the foreign minister of Cyprus, which currently holds the EU presidency, about the deadly crackdown on protesters in Iran.

“The main focus of the conversation was the murderous repression of Iranian citizens’ protests and their struggle for freedom by the Iranian regime,” Sa’ar wrote on X.

He said he had called on the European Union to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.

“The Revolutionary Guards are today leading the repression and the slaughter of Iranian citizens,” Sa’ar said, adding that the group had for decades promoted terrorism and instability in the Middle East and beyond.

Sa’ar said such a move would be a practical step and would also send what he called a message of hope to Iranians.

US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said on Thursday he hoped tensions with Iran could be resolved through diplomacy, while warning that the alternative would be worse.

“I hope there’s a diplomatic resolution. I really do,” Witkoff said at a conference organized by the Israel-America Council in Florida.

He said Washington’s concerns centered on what he described as four main issues: nuclear enrichment, missile capabilities, stockpiles of enriched material and Iran’s regional proxies.

“There are four issues: nuclear enrichment, missiles – they have to cut back on their inventory – the actual material that they have, which is roughly 2,000 kilograms, which is enriched anywhere between 3.67% and 60, and the proxies, of course,” he said.

“If they want to come back to the League of Nations, we can solve those four problems diplomatically, and then that would be a great resolution,” he added. “And I think the alternative is a bad one.”

Witkoff also said the Trump administration had opened direct communications with Iranian officials amid concerns about possible mass executions.

“At his direction, we communicated with the Iranians yesterday,” he said. “One of the things we were concerned about were the killings that were rumored to be on the way – hangings, mass hangings – and that’s been shut down.”

He said Iran’s internal pressures could shape its next steps, citing what he described as power shortages, water scarcity and high inflation.

Iranian Oscar-winning filmmakers Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani called on the United States to take military action against Iran’s leadership, saying international intervention was a moral duty.

“International military intervention is not only a necessity; it is a moral responsibility,” they wrote in a guest column published this week on The Wrap .

They said Iranians could not remove what they described as a violent and illegitimate system on their own.

“Without decisive global support, the Iranian people cannot dismantle a regime that has made peaceful change impossible,” they added.

Activists rallied outside the Iranian embassy in Seoul on Friday, holding placards in support of anti-government protests in Iran and calling for an end to the killing of demonstrators.