ISRAEL and the United States have sent Islamic State (Isis) terrorists to take part in the mass uprisings, Iranian authorities alleged today.

This comes as more observers call out the hypocrisy of nations who slam Iran’s clampdown on protests but themselves fail to follow international law.

At least 2,000 protesters are alleged to have been killed in a brutal Iranian clampdown, but it is not possible to report verifiable figures due to the Iranian closure of internet and communications facilities.

Armed forces chief of staff Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi said that, to compensate for their defeat in last year’s 12-day “holy defensive war,” the US and Israel had “unleashed Isis terrorists on our great people.”

He added: “These mercenaries, who are worse than wild beasts, killed civilians and law enforcement officials.” 

Maj Gen Mousavi warned that “the Iranian security forces would not allow a single Isis terrorist or foreign puppet to gain a foothold in the country.”

Unrest in the country began on December 29 with street protests triggered by a sharp fall in the value of the Iranian rial, which spread to most major cities.

Authorities have reported the deaths of around 100 members of the security forces. 

According to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, armed terrorists appeared among the demonstrators on January 8. 

The Iranian authorities have repeatedy blamed Israel and the US for organising the unrest.

US President Donald Trump has continued to threaten direct military action against Iran in support of the protesters.

He has warned Tehran that the US military is “locked and loaded,” but it appears that this has been put on standby as the president ponders the next steps, saying that Iranian officials are seeking talks with the White House.

“What you’re hearing publicly from the Iranian regime is quite different from the messages the administration is receiving privately, and I think the president has an interest in exploring those messages,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday.

“However, with that said, the president has shown he’s unafraid to use military options if and when he deems necessary, and nobody knows that better than Iran.”

Hours later, Trump announced on social media that he would slap 25 per cent tariffs on countries doing business with Tehran, “effective immediately.”

This would be his first action aimed at penalising Iran for the protest crackdown and the latest example of him using tariffs as a tool to force friends and foes on the global stage to bend to his will.

China, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Brazil and Russia are among the countries that do business with Tehran.

The White House declined to offer further comment or details about the president’s tariff announcement.

Elham Kadkhodaei, an assistant professor at the University of Tehran, said she did not expect Mr Trump’s latest trade tariff announcement to have “a very significant effect” in Iran, noting that the country had been enduring “crippling” US-policed sanctions for many years.

Ms Kadkhodaei told Al Jazeera: “Iran has always found ways of getting around these sanctions, so I think this is again what’s going to happen.”

The White House has offered scant details on Iran’s bid to open talks, but Ms Leavitt confirmed that US presidential special envoy Steve Witkoff would be a key player in any engagement with Tehran.

Mr Trump has reportedly been briefed on a wide range of covert and military options for interfering in Iran, according to US Department of Defence sources.

He had said earlier that his military was weighing up “very strong options” to intervene in Iran if more protesters were killed. 

The president said Iranian leaders had called him “to negotiate,” but he added that the US “may have to act before a meeting.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that, while Tehran was open to talks with Washington, it remained “prepared for war.

He told Al Jazeera that he was already in communication with Mr Witkoff and discussions were “still ongoing.”

But Mr Araghchi added: “Washington’s proposed ideas and threats against our country are incompatible.”

Mr Trump’s national security team was due to meet at the White House last night to further consider the options on Iran.

While many observers salute the bravery of protesters on the streets of Iran, a growing number are beginning to call out foreign interference in the country.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai said today that she was supporting the Iranian protesters.

She took to social media to say that “the protests in Iran cannot be separated from the longstanding, state-imposed restrictions on girls’ and women’s autonomy, in all aspects of public life including education. Iranian girls, like girls everywhere, demand a life with dignity.”

But Ms Yousafzai added: “[Iran’s] future must be driven by the Iranian people and include the leadership of Iranian women and girls — not external forces or oppressive regimes.”

In Britain, former MP George Galloway spoke of “irony overload,” pointing out that “Trump is demanding that Iran doesn’t shoot demonstrators while exalting the shooting of American demonstrators by his own army.”

Journalist Owen Jones posted on social media that “we should stand by Iran’s protesters as they fight a repressive theocracy,” but “we should also oppose yet another catastrophic Western intervention.”

Fellow journalist Richard Medhurst slammed the supposed concerns about the human rights of the Iranian people when the same politicians and observers who have expressed them “never called for US sanctions to be lifted, which strangle Iranians on a daily basis.”

He said: “Former CIA officials and Israeli media are openly saying the riots in Iran are their doing. That’s not a detail. It’s the entire point. You don’t get to omit key facts and the geopolitical context. 

“All the frauds who did this in Syria are doing it again with Iran.”

Activist and writer Calla Walsh used social media to highlight how the US playbook is an all too familiar one.

“Protests are hijacked by CIA, Mossad, National Endowment for Democracy and counter-revolutionary diaspora organisations who pay people on the ground to foment violence, attack government buildings and destroy critical infrastructure, coupled with massive media campaigns against the anti-imperialist governments, portraying them as violent dictatorships that must be overthrown,” she wrote. 

“When the governments’ law enforcement apparatuses then intervene to re-establish order and protect the peace, this only reinforces the narrative that they are authoritarian. 

“Arrested foreign mercenaries are portrayed as ‘political prisoners.’ 

“And most of the Western ‘left’ falls for it. Every time. Without ever diagnosing the primary contradiction as US-led imperialism, its sanction regimes and its genocidal warfare.”

US political scientist John Mearsheimer highlighted the role of Israel, accusing Tel Aviv of “pushing the US toward war with Iran to divert global attention, so that they can easily carry out the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”