Several defeats towards the end of his career meant that Ali finished with a record of 56 wins and 5 losses, but is is a man who retired undefeated that ‘The Greatest’ says would have been his hardest assignment.
In a past interview with ESPN, Ali once explained why he thought it would have been a difficult task if he went up against Rocky Marciano.
“The toughest fight would be the man who is the hardest to knock out … a fellow who had no style just a bull, Rocky Marciano … he would be the most trouble I think.”
Ali also spoke about Marciano further in another interview.
“Rocky wasn’t a great fighter scientifically, just a mauler and a brawler. One fight his nose is hanging off him, and he kept coming. Can’t put him down. Can’t teach people to fight like Marciano. He just had his own style.
“He wasn’t as great as me, wasn’t as beautiful, but I don’t know that I would’ve beaten him like that.”
Marciano held the world heavyweight title from 1952 to 1956, retiring with a perfect 49-0 record after successful defences over fighters such as Archie Moore and Ezzard Charles.
Arguably his most famous victory came in October 1951 though, when he secured an eighth round TKO victory over Joe Louis, in what would prove to be the final fight for ‘The Brown Bomber.’
The announcement contradicts claims from local rights groups that no more than 70 prisoners have been freed in recent days.
Published On 14 Jan 202614 Jan 2026
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Venezuela’s top lawmaker says more than 400 people have been freed from prison, contradicting claims from rights groups that only between 60 to 70 prisoners have been released in recent days, amid calls for freeing those imprisoned for political reasons.
Jorge Rodriguez, the president of the National Assembly, made the announcement during a parliamentary session on Tuesday.
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“The decision to release some prisoners, not political prisoners, but some politicians who had broken the law and violated the Constitution, people who called for invasion, was granted,” Rodriguez told parliament.
He said more than 400 prisoners had been released, but did not provide a specific timeline.
Both Rodriguez and United States President Donald Trump have said that large numbers of prisoners would be freed as a peace gesture following the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3 by US forces.
The release of political prisoners in Venezuela has been a long-running call of rights groups, international bodies and opposition figures.
The Venezuelan government has always denied that it holds people for political reasons and has said it has already released most of the 2,000 people detained after protests over the contested 2024 presidential election.
Human rights groups estimated there are 800 to 1,200 political prisoners in Venezuela and have said that the number of prisoners freed since last week ranges between 60 and 70, and have denounced the slow pace and lack of information surrounding the releases.
Bloomberg News has reported that at least one US citizen was released from prison on Tuesday.
Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado has been one of the leading voices demanding the release of prisoners, some of whom are her close allies.
She is expected to meet with Trump on Thursday in Washington, DC. On the same day, acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez plans to send an envoy to the US capital to meet with senior officials, Bloomberg News reported.
Meanwhile, the US is continuing to take control of oil shipments in and out of Venezuela following its abduction of Maduro.
The US government has filed for court warrants to seize dozens more tanker vessels linked to the Venezuelan oil trade, according to a Reuters report.
The US military and coastguard have already seized five vessels in recent weeks in international waters, which were either carrying Venezuelan oil or had done so in the past.
Trump imposed a naval blockade on Venezuela to prevent US-sanctioned tankers from shipping Venezuelan oil in December, a move that brought the country’s oil exports close to a standstill.
Shipments have now resumed under US supervision, and, as the Trump administration says, it plans to control Venezuela’s oil resources indefinitely.
Why did the ice ages occur? If you need a scapegoat, a new study by Stephen Kane of UC Riverside suggests pointing the finger at Mars. According to computer models, the pull of the Red Planet may have altered the Earth’s orbit until things got nippy.
These days, the word “climate” is tossed around so much that many use it as if it’s synonymous with “weather.” In fact, there are many differences between them, not the least of which is a matter of sheer scale.
The weather is very short term. It’s on a scale of hours, days, weeks, and months. Climate operates on the scale of decades, centuries, millennia, and epochs. It also involves mindbogglingly complex, interacting cycles that can stretch over millions of years.
If you follow weather news closely (and who am I to judge?) you’re probably familiar with short-term weather cycles like El Niño and La Niña that are fluctuations of surface sea temperatures and air pressure over the tropical Pacific Ocean that run over two to seven years. There are also longer ones like the decadal and multi-decadal cycles that take 10 to 80 years.
But these are rookie numbers compared to the really long climate cycles that take millions of years to complete.
Two of these are the Metronome and Modifier cycles that take 405,000 years and are the result of the pull of Jupiter and Venus on the Earth’s orbit. These are called Milankovitch cycles that pull our planet’s orbit out of a circle and make it slightly elliptical. This causes the distance between the Earth and the Sun to alter significantly throughout the year, resulting in the solar radiation reaching us changing by as much as 23%.
The pull of Mars produces long-cycle changes to the Earth’s orbit
NASA
These cycles are fairly well understood, but what Kane’s simulation has uncovered is that Mars has a significant effect on the Earth’s climate as well. Of course, what with Isaac Newton and all, he expected some effect, but not what he saw in the figures.
“I knew Mars had some effect on Earth, but I assumed it was tiny,” said Kane. “I’d thought its gravitational influence would be too small to easily observe within Earth’s geologic history. I kind of set out to check my own assumptions.”
One aggravating habit of the Earth is its geographically recent tendency to plunge into ice ages with major glaciations every 100,000 years. According to current thinking, Venus and Jupiter provide a long-term metronome to the Earth’s orbit. They don’t cause ice ages, but they do control the volume of things like glaciation and the factors that can trigger ice ages.
Kane’s simulations show that without Mars the frequent and intense transitions between deep ice ages and warm interglacial periods as we’ve seen over the past 2.6 million years wouldn’t happen. Instead, it controls a 2.4 million year Grand Cycle that can be seen in deep-sea sediments that show hiatuses where deep-sea currents become so vigorous that they erode the sea bed, preventing sediments from accumulating. This cycle set off mechanisms that make ice ages more icy and warm periods warmer and the switch between them more dramatic.
The implications of this go beyond Mars helping to keep the Earth’s climate from looking like a dreary day in the Orkneys. Some anthropologists contend that rapid climate shifts caused by these orbit cycles caused a shift in Africa from forests to grasslands. This, in turn, produced environmental pressures that pushed humans to start walking on their hind legs and develop a bigger brain.
Apple and Google’s surprise AI partnership announcement on Monday sent shockwaves across the tech industry (and lifted Google’s market cap above $4 trillion). The two tech giants’ deal to infuse Google’s AI technology into Apple’s mobile software, including in an updated version of the Siri digital assistant, has major implications in the high-stakes battle to dominate AI and to own the platform that will define the next generation of computing.
While there are still many unanswered questions about the partnership, including the financial component and the duration of the deal, some key takeaways are already clear. Here’s why the deal is good news for Google, so-so news for Apple, and bad news for OpenAI.
The deal is further validation that Google has got its AI mojo back
When OpenAI debuted ChatGPT in November 2022, and throughout a good part of the next two years, many industry observers had their doubts about Google’s prospects in the changing landscape. The search giant at times appeared to be floundering as it raced to field models that could be as capable as OpenAI’ s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Google endured several embarrassing product debuts, when its Bard chatbot and then its successor Gemini models got facts wrong, recommended glue as a pizza topping, and generated images of historically anachronistic Black Nazis.
But today, Google’s latest Gemini models (Gemini 3) are among the most capable on the market and gaining traction among both consumers and businesses. The company has also been attracting lots of customers to its Google Cloud, in part because of the power of its bespoke AI chips, called tensor processing units (or TPUs), which may offer cost and speed advantages over Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) for running AI models.
Apple’s statement on Monday that “after careful consideration” it had determined that Google’s AI technology “provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models” served as Gemini’s ultimate validation—particularly given that until now, OpenAI was Apple’s preferred technology provider for “Apple Intelligence” offerings. Analysts at Bank of America said the deal reinforced “Gemini’s position as a leading LLM for mobile devices” and should also help strengthen investor confidence in the durability of Google’s search distribution and long-term monetization.
Hamza Mudassir, who runs an AI agent startup and teaches strategy and policy at the University of Cambridge’s Judge School of Business, said Apple’s decision is likely about more than just Gemini’s technical capabilities. Apple does not allow partners to train on Apple user data, and Mudassir theorized that Apple may have concluded Google’s control over its ecosystem—such as owning its own cloud—could provide data privacy and intellectual property guarantees that perhaps OpenAI or Anthropic couldn’t match.
The deal also likely translates directly into revenue for Google. Although the financial details of the were not disclosed, a previous report from Bloomberg suggested Apple was paying Google about $1 billion a year for the right to use its tech.
The bigger prize for Google may be the foot-in-the-door the deal provides to Apple’s massive distribution channel: the approximately 1.5 billion iPhone users worldwide. With Gemini powering the new version of Siri, Google may get a share of any revenue those users generate through product discovery and purchases made through a Gemini-powered Siri. Eventually, it might potentially even lead to an arrangement that would see Gemini’s chatbot app pre-installed on iPhones.
For Apple, the implications of the deal are a bit more ambivalent
Apple’s Tim Cook
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The iPhone maker will obviously benefit from giving users a much more capable Siri, as well as other AI features, at an attractive cost and while guaranteeing user privacy. Dan Ives, an equity analyst who covers Apple for Wedbush, said in a note the deal provided Apple with “a stepping stone to accelerate its AI strategy into 2026 and beyond.”
But Apple’s continuing need to rely on partners—first OpenAI and now Google—to deliver these AI features is a worrisome sign, suggesting that Apple, a champion of vertical integration, is still struggling to build its own LLM.
It’s a problem that has dogged the company since the beginning of the generative AI era: For months last year several Apple Intelligence features were delayed, and the long-awaited debut of an updated Siri has been pushed back numerous times. These delays have taken a toll on Apple’s reputation as a tech leader and angered customers, some of whom filed a class action lawsuit against the company after the AI features promoted in ads for the iPhone 16 weren’t initially available on the device.
When Apple CEO Tim Cook promised an updated version of Siri would be released in 2026, many assumed it would be powered by Apple’s own AI models. But apparently those models are not yet ready for prime time and the new Siri will be powered by Google instead.
Daniel Newman, an analyst at the Futurum Group, said that 2026 is a “make-or-break year” for Apple. “We have long said the company has the user base and distribution that allows it to be more patient in chasing new trends like AI, but this is a critical year for Apple,” Newman said.
Cook has shaken up the ranks, installing a new head of AI who previously worked at Google on Gemini. And, if the delays turn out to be related to Apple’s specific requirements around things like privacy, it may ultimately prove to have been worth the wait. Ideally, Apple would want an AI model that matches the capabilities of those from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google but which is compact enough to run entirely on an iPhone, so that user data does not have to be transmitted to the cloud. It’s possible, said Mudassir, that Apple is grappling with technical limitations involving the amount of power these models consume and how much heat they generate. Partnering with Google buys Apple time to make breakthroughs in compression and architecture while also getting Wall Street “off its back,” he said.
Apple defenders note that the company is rarely a first mover in new technology—it was not the first to create an MP3 player, a smartphone, wireless earphones, or a smart watch, yet it came from behind to dominate many of those product categories with a combination of design innovation and savvy marketing. And Apple has a history of learning from partners for key technology, such as chips, before ultimately bringing these efforts in-house.
Or, in the case of internet search, Apple simply partnered with Google for the long-term, using the Google engine to handle search queries in its Safari browser. The fact that Apple never developed its own search engine has not hurt its growth. Could the same principle hold true for AI?
But the Apple-Google tie up is almost certainly bad news for OpenAI
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
Florian Gaertner/Photothek via Getty Images
While the Google partnership is not exclusive, meaning that Apple may continue to rely on OpenAI’s models for some of its Apple Intelligence features and OpenAI still has a chance to prove its models’ worth to Cupertino, Apple’s decision to go with Google is definitely a blow. At the very least, it solidifies the narrative that Google has not only caught up with OpenAI, but has now edged past it in having the best AI models in the market.
Deprived of built-in distribution through Apple’s customer base, OpenAI may find it harder to grow its own user base. The company currently boasts more than 800 million weekly users, but recent reports suggest that the rate of usage may be slowing. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has noted that many people currently see ChatGPT as synonymous with AI. But that perception could fray if Apple users find delight in using Gemini through Siri and come to see Gemini as the better model. . Altman told reporters last month that he sees Apple as his company’s primary long-term rival. OpenAI is in the process of developing a new kind of AI device, with help from Apple’s former chief designer Jony Ive, that Altman hopes will rival the phone as the primary way consumers interface with AI assistants. That device may debut this year. As long as Apple was dependent on ChatGPT to power Siri, OpenAI had a good view into the capabilities its new device would be competing against. OpenAI is unlikely to have as much insight into Apple’s AI capabilities going forward, which may make it harder for the upstart to position its new device as an iPhone killer.
OpenAI has to hope its new device is a hit that may enable it to cement users into a closed ecosystem, not dissimilar to the one Apple has built around its hardware device and iOS software. This “walled garden” approach is one way to keep users from switching to rival products when they offer broadly similar capabilities. OpenAI will also have to hope its AI researchers achieve breakthroughs that give it a more decisive and long-lasting edge over Google. That might convince Apple to rely more heavily on OpenAI again in the future. Or, it could obviate the need for OpenAI to have distribution on Apple’s devices at all.
Greenland’s prime minister has said his people would choose Denmark over the US if they were asked to make such a choice “here and now”.
Jens-Frederik Nielsen’s remark at a joint news conference with Denmark’s prime minister is the strongest by a representative of the semi-autonomous Danish territory since US President Donald Trump renewed his plan to annex it.
Trump says the US needs to “own” Greenland to defend against Russia and China. The White House has suggested buying the island, but not ruled out the use of force to annex it.
Denmark is a fellow Nato member and Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that military force would spell the end of the trans-Atlantic defence alliance.
Asked later on Tuesday what he made of Nielsen’s comments, Trump said: “That’s their problem, I disagree with him… That’s going to be a big problem for him.”
Despite being the most sparsely populated territory, Greenland’s location between North America and the Arctic makes it well placed for early warning systems in the event of missile attacks, and for monitoring vessels in the region.
Trump has repeatedly said that Greenland is vital to US national security, claiming without evidence that it was “covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place”.
The US already has more than 100 military personnel permanently stationed at its Pituffik base in Greenland’s north-western tip – a facility that has been operated by the US since World War Two.
Under existing agreements with Denmark, the US has the power to bring as many troops as it wants to Greenland.
But Trump told reporters in Washington last week that a lease agreement was not good enough – the US “had to have ownership” and “Nato’s got to understand that”.
At the news conference in the Danish capital Copenhagen, Frederiksen did not mince her words as she condemned the “completely unacceptable pressure from our closest ally”.
She warned that “there are many indications that the most challenging part is ahead of us”.
The Greenlandic prime minister said they were “facing a geopolitical crisis”, but the island’s position was clear:
“If we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark,” he said.
“One thing must be clear to everyone. Greenland does not want to be owned by the United States. Greenland does not want to be governed by the United States. Greenland does not want to be part of the United States.”
The Copenhagen news conference comes a day before the Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt are due to travel to the US to meet Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Denmark’s Nato allies – major European countries as well as Canada – have rallied to its support this week with statements reaffirming that “only Denmark and Greenland can decide on matters concerning their relations”.
Stressing they were as keen as the US on Arctic security, they have said this must be achieved by allies, including the US, “collectively”.
They also called for “upholding the principles of the UN Charter, including sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders”.
Concerns over the future of the territory resurfaced after Trump’s use of military force against Venezuela on Saturday to seize its president, Nicolás Maduro.
Trump previously made an offer to buy the island in 2019, during his first presidential term, only to be told it was not for sale.
In recent years, there has been increased interest in Greenland’s natural resources – including rare earth minerals, uranium and iron – which are becoming easier to access as its ice melts due to climate change. Scientists think it could also have significant oil and gas reserves.
Sony Music Publishing Nashville has acquired independent publishing and artist development company Big Yellow Dog Music (BYD).
The agreement means that SMP now owns and administers Big Yellow Dog’s catalog of songs and serves as publisher for its roster of songwriters.
Founded in 1998 by Kerry O’Neil and Carla Wallace, Nashville-based Big Yellow Dog Music is home to a catalog of songs that includes Meghan Trainor’s All About That Bass,Dear Future Husband, No and Like I’m Gonna Lose You, plus Maren Morris’ The Bones, My Church, 80’s Mercedes and I Could Use A Love Song.
BYD’s catalog also includes songs from the Grammy award-winning album Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves, as well as hits by Chris Stapleton, Sabrina Carpenter, Hozier, Jonas Brothers, Demi Lovato, Leon Bridges, MUNA, The Black Keys, Aminé, Leon Thomas, and more.
Over the past 26 years, Big Yellow Dog and its songwriters have achieved recognition across the industry, spanning multiple genres, earning 41 No.1 songs, numerous Grammy awards and nominations, and honors across BMI, ASCAP, SESAC and ACM awards.
Commenting on the deal, Big Yellow Dog Music Co-Founder Kerry O’Neil said: “These last 26 years have been a once-in-a-lifetime journey full of amazing songs, including some worldwide hits.”
“These last 26 years have been a once-in-a-lifetime journey full of amazing songs, including some worldwide hits.”
Kerry O’Neil, Big Yellow Dog Music
Added Kerry O’Neil: “Now it’s time for a new chapter and Carla and I are so pleased to have our friends at Sony carry the torch from here. We know our writers and their great catalog are in sure hands.
“Thank you to Jon, Rusty, Cam and Brian. Most of all, I want to thank Carla for her unique and bold creative leadership over all these years.”
Big Yellow Dog Music Co-Founder Carla Wallace added: “There’s no way to capture 26 years of dancing, creating, and pure joy at Big Yellow Dog Music.”
“It has been a true privilege to partner with one of the most brilliant minds in Nashville, Kerry O’Neil. I know our legacy will continue to thrive in the very best hands with Rusty Gaston and the Sony team.”
Carla Wallace, Big Yellow Dog Music
Added Wallace: “Sharing each day with an endlessly talented, passionate, and hilarious team has been an unforgettable gift. Championing extraordinary artists, hearing future hits before the world, and watching dreams take flight has been nothing short of magical.
“It has been a true privilege to partner with one of the most brilliant minds in Nashville, Kerry O’Neil. I know our legacy will continue to thrive in the very best hands with Rusty Gaston and the Sony team.”
“Carla and Kerry are two of the most respected publishers in this business, and they have set the bar for independent success in Nashville and beyond.”
Rusty Gaston, Sony Music Publishing Nashville
Sony Music Publishing Nashville CEO Rusty Gaston said: “Big Yellow Dog has been a Music Row institution for more than a quarter century.
“Carla and Kerry are two of the most respected publishers in this business, and they have set the bar for independent success in Nashville and beyond.
“Their catalog contains some of the most performed songs over the past two decades – songs that haven’t just been hits but have defined careers. It’s an honor to represent this amazing collection of songs and to continue Big Yellow Dog’s legacy with future cuts coming from the catalog and new music from their standout roster.”Music Business Worldwide
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Armed security forces were deployed at a pro-government rally in Tehran on Monday
More than 2,000 people have been killed during the violent crackdown by security forces on protests in Iran, a human rights group has said, as President Trump promised Iranians that help was “on its way”.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported that it had so far confirmed the killing of 1,850 protesters, 135 people affiliated with the government and nine uninvolved civilians as well as nine children over the last 17 days despite an internet blackout.
An Iranian official also told Reuters that 2,000 people had been killed but that “terrorists” were to blame.
Trump said Iranian authorities would “pay a big price” for the killings and urged people to “keep protesting”.
He has been weighing military and other options in response to the crackdown, having already announced 25% tariffs on any country trading with Iran.
The protests, which have reportedly spread to 180 cities and towns in all 31 provinces, were sparked by anger over the collapse of the Iranian currency and soaring cost of living.
They quickly widened into demands for political change and became one of the most serious challenges to the clerical establishment since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The protests escalated significantly last Thursday and were met with deadly force by authorities, masked by a near total shutdown of the internet and communication services.
HRANA said on Tuesday afternoon that, as well as confirming the killing of at least 2,003 people during the unrest, it was also reviewing reports of another 779 deaths.
“We’re horrified, but we still think the number is conservative,” Deputy Director Skylar Thompson told the Associated Press.
Another group, Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR), meanwhile said it had confirmed the killing of at least 734 protesters.
Its director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, told AFP news agency that the figures were “based on information received from fewer than half of the country’s provinces and fewer than 10% of Iran’s hospitals”, adding: “The real number of those killed is likely in the thousands.”
Reuters said the unnamed Iranian official who put the death toll at about 2,000 had not given a breakdown of the figure. However, it added, he said “terrorists” were behind the deaths of both protesters and security personnel.
Mortuary videos shows violent government crackdown in Iran
It is difficult to gauge the true scale of bloodshed because, like other international news organisations, the BBC is not able to report from inside the country.
However, videos posted online on Sunday showed people searching for the bodies of their loved ones at the Kahrizak Forensic Centre in Tehran. The BBC counted at least 180 shrouded bodies and body bags in the footage.
Around 50 bodies were visible in another video from the facility shared on Monday.
“My friend went there [Kahrizak] to look for his brother, and he forgot his own sorrow,” an activist told BBC Persian on Monday.
“They piled up bodies from every neighbourhood, like Saadatabad, Naziabad, Sattarkhan. So you go to your address pile and search there. You don’t know a fraction of the level of violence that’s been used.”
Hospitals in the capital have also reportedly been overwhelmed by the number of casualties.
Prof Shahram Kordasti, an Iranian oncologist based in London, told the BBC’s Newsday programme on Tuesday that the last message he had received from a colleague in Tehran said: “In most hospitals, it’s like a warzone. We are short of supplies, short of blood.”
Other doctors at “two to three hospitals” had also said they had treated hundreds of injured or dead people, he added.
An Iranian living in Rasht, near the Caspian Sea coast, described the city as unrecognisable. “Everywhere is burnt with fire,” they said.
Not long after HRANA released its latest death toll, President Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price.”
“I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!!,” he added, using the acronym for a US-based Iranian opposition slogan, “Make Iran Great Again”.
Trump’s national security team was expected to hold a meeting at the White House on Tuesday to discuss options for Iran.
On Monday night, US defence officials told the BBC’s US partner, CBS news, that Trump had been briefed on a wide range of covert and military tools, including long-range missile strikes, cyber operations and psychological campaign responses.
At the same time, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Al Jazeera that Iran was ready for diplomacy but also for other options, including “if the US wanted to test the military option which it had tested in the past”. In June, the US carried out air strikes on key Iranian nuclear facilities during a 12-day war between Iran and Israel.
Araghchi also said that Iranian government had been in dialogue with protesters, but that it had been forced to take action after “trained terrorist groups” run from abroad infiltrated the demonstrations and targeted security forces.
His comments echoed those of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who told supporters at state-organised rallies across the country on Monday that they had “neutralised the plans by foreign enemies that were meant to be performed by domestic mercenaries”.
EPA
Supporters of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last shah, protested outside the Houses of Parliament in London on Tuesday
Also on Tuesday, UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper summoned the Iranian ambassador to protest in response at what she called “the horrendous and brutal killing of Iranian protesters”.
The UN human rights chief Volker Türk urged Iranian authorities to halt all forms of violence and repression against peaceful protesters immediately, his office said.
He added that the labelling of protesters as “terrorists” to justify violence was unacceptable and that it was “extremely worrying” to see statements from Iranian officials indicating the possibility of the death penalty being used against protesters through expedited trials.
Judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said on Monday that those involved in the unrest would be “dealt with seriously and severely”. And prosecutors have said some will be charged with “enmity against God”, a national security offence that carries the death penalty.
More than 16,780 protesters have been arrested during the unrest, according to HRANA.
A 26-year-old man detained last Thursday has already been sentenced to death, according to his family and Norway-based Kurdish human rights group Hengaw.
A relative of Erfan Soltani’s family told BBC Persian that “in an extremely rapid process, within just two days, the court issued a death sentence, and the family was told that he is due to be executed [this] Wednesday”.
“We have never witnessed a case move so quickly,” Awyar Shekhi of Hengaw told the BBC. “The government is using every tactic they know to suppress people and spread fear.”
Speaking to the BBC’s US news partner CBS later on Tuesday, Trump said the US would take “very strong action” if Iran’s authorities started hanging protesters.
“If they hang them, you’re going to see some things… We will take very strong action if they do such a thing,” he said.
BBC Persian
Videos obtained by BBC Persian showed recent protests in Tabriz and several other cities in western Iran
Türk also demanded that Iranian authorities restore full access to the internet and other communication services.
Some international calls from Iran went through on Tuesday, but the internet shutdown has now passed 120 hours, according to monitor NetBlocks.
One person living near Tehran with access via the Starlink satellite service told BBC Persian that there were “checkpoints in every block”, where cars and the phones of their occupants were being inspected by security forces.
New videos of protests in recent days have also emerged, with BBC Persian verifying those filmed in the central city of Arak and the western cities of Tabriz, Urmia and Khorramabad.
The protesters chant slogans “Death to the dictator” – a reference to Ayatollah Khamenei – and “Reza Shah, may your soul rest in peace” – referring to the late monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown in the 1979 revolution and whose son Reza lives in exile.
