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.
The 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.