Trump says US may proceed without Iran deal
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday the United States might abandon efforts to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran, saying it could achieve its objectives without one.
"I don't know if we're going to have a deal," Trump told reporters in Ankara. "We may just do it without a deal, because you know what, it's easier."
Trump said Iran's leaders "lie and they cheat" and accused them of reneging on commitments after negotiations.
"They'll never build a nuclear weapon under our deal," he said. "But I don't know if we're going to have a deal."
Trump also criticized former President Barack Obama's nuclear agreement with Iran, calling it "one of the worst tragedies" in the Middle East and saying, "Our deal is a wall to a nuclear weapon. His deal was a road to a nuclear weapon."
He said Iran had killed US soldiers over the past four decades and blamed former Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani for the use of roadside bombs against American forces.
The case stems from protests on January 8 at Alikhani Square in Isfahan, where authorities said four Basij members were killed.
According to the lawyer, 59 people were initially arrested after the incident.
The lawyer said 23 of those detained were sentenced to between five and 10 years in prison, even though they were not accused of directly taking part in the deaths and appeared to have been added to the case to strengthen the prosecution’s broader narrative.
Twelve others were sentenced to death.
The lawyer said the Supreme Court upheld the death sentences on July 5 and the case has now been sent to the sentence enforcement branch of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court, raising fears that the executions could be carried out soon.
The prosecutor in the case is Mohammad Nakhjavan, according to the information received. The judges are Mohammad Barati-Dorcheh and Mohammad Tavakoli, also known as Vakili.
Tavakoli previously served as a judge in the “Khaneh Isfahan” (Isfahan House) case, another protest-linked case in Isfahan that ended with the execution of Saleh Mirhashemi, Majid Kazemi and Saeed Yaghoubi in May 2023.
The lawyer said the defendants in the Alikhani Square case were denied access to independent lawyers during the trial stage and were represented by court-appointed attorneys.
The lawyer also said the court blocked defense lawyers from accessing the full case files.
The 12 protesters sentenced to death are mostly very young men. Three were born in 2007 and were around 17 or 18 at the time of the January 2026 protests. Several others were born between 2004 and 2006, and one is an Afghan national. Two brothers are among those facing execution.
The judiciary has not publicly responded to the allegations about denial of access to independent counsel and case files.
The case fits a pattern seen in several protest-linked capital cases in Iran, where the reported deaths of security personnel or pro-government forces have been followed by broad arrests, charges carrying the death penalty and claims by families, lawyers and rights groups that defendants were denied fair trial guarantees.
Rights groups have warned that Iran’s use of death sentences in protest cases has become a tool of intimidation, particularly after periods of unrest, with executions used to send a message far beyond the individual defendants.
Amnesty International said in February that at least 30 people were facing the death penalty over alleged offences linked to the January 2026 protests, including eight people sentenced to death after expedited and “grossly unfair” trials.
The Center for Human Rights in Iran said in April that at least 22 political prisoners had been executed in six weeks, including 10 people detained during the January protests, in cases it said were marked by secretive proceedings, torture, forced confessions and lack of due process.
Human Rights Watch said the January unrest was met with mass killings, arbitrary arrests and severe communications restrictions, with thousands of protesters and bystanders believed to have been killed after protests escalated on January 8.
The new Isfahan case raises the number of protest-linked prisoners facing imminent execution and adds to fears that Iran’s judiciary is accelerating capital punishment in cases tied to the January uprising.
