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You're listening to News Hour from the BBC World Service with me, Gary O'Donoghue.

We begin today with Iran.

And protests have continued in the country with reports of hundreds of people being killed and injured

as the authorities clamp down on the demonstrators.

Information is hard to come by as the regime has attempted to block the internet traffic in the past day or two,

together with threats to charge protesters with crimes that would carry the death penalty.

Iran's rulers have also threatened to retaliate should threats from Donald Trump to intervene to manifest themselves.

Let's start, though, in Mashad, a city in the northwest of the country,

where protesters have hid behind barricades as security forces fired shots from a footbridge.

And these are the sounds of protesters in Tehran on Saturday evening,

chanting slogans demanding the end of clerical rule in Iran.

And in the past couple of hours,

the Iranian president, Masud Peschekian, has been giving an interview on state television.

The United States and Israel are sitting there, giving instructions to these people, telling them, go ahead, we're backing you.

The same ones who struck this country and killed our young people and our children are now giving them orders, telling them you do this work.

We are with you. You go and carry out acts of sabotage and we will support you from behind.

And that was the words of the Iranian president.

We're joined now on the line by our chief international correspondent, Lees Doucette.

Some suggestion from the president that he may be prepared to listen, Leeds.

Is that a sign of how serious the regime is taking these protests?

Well, it's just a repetition of what he tried to do in the first days of this unrest.

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