Iran Softens Rhetoric on Protesters as Police Continue Crackdown

Top Iranian officials called for “leniency and compassion” for some of the protesters arrested during the latest wave of unrest, despite a pledge from the police to continue cracking down on dissenters.

The statement, jointly released Monday by Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, the judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, and parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, comes days after US President Donald Trump appeared to call off an attack on Iran over its use of deadly violence against protesters, saying he’d been assured that hundreds of planned executions and further killings had been called off.