President Donald Trump has said the United States tried to covertly arm Iranian protesters through Kurdish intermediaries weeks before the current war was launched, even as Washington was engaged in talks with Tehran.“We sent guns to the protesters, a lot of them,” Fox News quoted Trump as saying late on Sunday, adding that the US president believed that the Kurds kept the guns for themselves.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listThe comments come amid the US-Israel war on Iran, which was launched on February 28, weeks after demonstrations erupted over the high cost of living. The protests, one of the largest in decades, were triggered by the worsening economic situation following decades of US sanctions.Media reports, including by Israel’s Channel 12, during the protests in January, also claimed that demonstrators were being armed by “foreign” actors.Trump also claimed that, during the protests, Iran “slaughtered” some 45,000 civilians, Fox News reported. His claims could not be independently verified.Iranian authorities say 3,117 people were killed during the weeks of protests, rejecting United Nations and rights groups’ claims that state forces were responsible. Iranian officials have said hundreds of police officials were killed and government properties damaged by the protesters, whom they dubbed “rioters”, “saboteurs” and “terrorists”. It has since executed several people on charges of participating in the protests at the behest of foreign enemies.The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) said in late January that it had verified 6,872 deaths and was investigating more than 11,000 additional cases, while a UN special rapporteur h …
