Iran's foreign minister: protests brought under 'total control'
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei has hailed a day of rallies in support of the government, as estimates of the number of anti- regime protesters killed by his security forces continue to rise. The Ayatollah said it was a historic day which had thwarted Iran's enemies. He described the rallies as a warning to the United States and what he called its domestic mercenaries. A Norway- based Iranian rights group (Iran Human Rights) says it's now confirmed almost 650 victims of his government's violent crackdown on dissent. But it warned that some estimates exceed 6,000 dead. Witnesses have told the BBC the scale of the use of force was unprecedented.
Also in the programme: Three former chairs of the US Federal Reserve have come to the defence of the current incumbent, Jerome Powell, who says he has been threatened by the Justice Department; and could a robot soon be doing your dishes?
(Photo: Mourners carry a coffin during a funeral procession for members of security forces and civilians said to be killed in protests on Sunday, amid evolving anti-government unrest, in Tehran, Iran, in this screen grab from a video released on January 11, 2026. Credit: IRIB/Handout via Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.0 | Welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service. I'm Gary O'Donoghue. We begin, of course, in Iran. |
| 0:17.1 | After days of protest across all 31 provinces of the country and hundreds of deaths, |
| 0:23.0 | the regime says it has brought the demonstrations under what it terms total control. |
| 0:28.6 | The government is still blocking the internet and phone calls, though information and videos |
| 0:33.4 | are still trickling out via some satellite links. After calling on people to support the regime, Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamini, |
| 0:41.9 | has issued a statement hailing a day of rallies, for which he said were in support of the government. |
| 0:48.4 | Now, it's not been easy to speak to people in Iran. |
| 0:51.3 | That's not just true for media organisations like the BBC, but also for thousands |
| 0:56.3 | of Iranians who live abroad. In a moment, we'll hear from someone who's just returned from the |
| 1:02.5 | country. But first, I spoke to Ashkan, a British Iranian businessman who runs a remittance business |
| 1:08.4 | that still deals with Iran. Has he managed to talk to his colleagues there? |
| 1:13.1 | Yes, we have. |
| 1:15.3 | That process has been well. |
| 1:17.5 | We have been attempting to give them a call through the main telephone lines. |
| 1:21.8 | Well, that just doesn't go through. |
| 1:23.9 | So we have posted messages on within our internal systems so that they can pick it up as soon as they are connected. |
| 1:31.1 | And we did have a successful contact with them last night. So our DevOps engineer, who is specialized in network engineering, has found a VPN server that was working at the time. So they managed to put a few of our team online |
| 1:48.1 | using the VPN connection. And I spoke with them last night, but then, well, that server got |
| 1:54.9 | shot down by this morning. So we only had like a very short period of contact. Now obviously you had that moment |
| 2:03.9 | where you were able to speak to people when the VPN was working. What were you hearing |
| 2:09.4 | from people on the ground about the situation on the streets then? Well, the first thing that |
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