US President Donald Trump said he had been told that killings in Iran’s crackdown on protests were easing and that he believed there was no current plan for large-scale executions, adopting a wait-and-see posture after earlier threatening intervention.
After Iran's foreign minister said Iran had "no plan" to hang people, Iranian state media on Thursday reported that a 26-year-old man arrested during protests in the city of Karaj would not be given the death sentence.
Rights organisation Hengaw, which reported earlier this week that Erfan Soltani was due to be executed on Wednesday, said a previously communicated order for his execution had been postponed, citing his relatives.
In a social media post on Thursday, Trump responded to a news report that an Iranian protester was no longer being sentenced to death, writing: "This is good news. Hopefully, it will continue!"
Trump said he had been told by "very important sources on the other side" that killings in the crackdown were subsiding.
He did not rule out potential US military action but said his administration had received a "very good statement" from Iran.
Iranian state media said that while Soltani was being charged with colluding against "internal security and propaganda activities against the regime", the death penalty does not apply to such charges.
Trump's comments on Wednesday led oil prices to retreat from multi-month highs and gold eased from a record peak on Thursday. Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene on behalf of protesters in Iran, where the clerical establishment has cracked down hard on nationwide unrest since 28 December.
Protests appear to abate, new US sanctions
People inside Iran, reached by Reuters on Wednesday and Thursday, said protests appeared to have abated since Monday. Information flows have been hampered by an internet blackout for a week.
President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday the government was trying to address some of the economic problems that first spurred the protests, adding that it intended to tackle issues of corruption and foreign exchange rates and that this would improve purchasing power for poorer people.
Despite this, Washington tightened pressure on Tehran on Thursday by imposing sanctions on five Iranian officials it accused of being behind the crackdown, and said it was tracking Iranian leaders' funds being wired to banks around the world.
The US treasury department imposed sanctions on the secretary of the Supreme Council for National Security as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and law enforcement forces commanders.
Sanctions were also imposed on Fardis Prison, where the US state department said women have "endured cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment".
The group of seven countries said it was prepared to impose additional restrictive measures on Iran if it continued to crack down.
Four Arab states call for de-escalation
Four Arab states have conducted intense diplomacy with the United States and Iran this week to prevent a threatened US attack on Iran over Tehran's use of force against protesters that they feared would have impacts across the region, a Gulf official said.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Egypt were involved in the diplomacy over 48 hours before Trump signalled on Thursday that he had ultimately decided against an attack for now, saying the killings in Iran were easing.
The four countries had conveyed to Washington that any attack would have consequences for the wider region in terms of both security and economics that would ultimately impact the United States itself, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
They told Iran that any retaliatory attack it launched on US facilities in the Gulf would have consequences for Iran's relations with other countries in the region, the official added.
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