Iran has warned it will retaliate if attacked by the US.
Several hundred protesters have now been killed and hundreds more injured.
Demonstrators again defied a deadly crackdown. Iran's police chief said on state TV that the government's response had intensified.
Medics at two hospitals told the BBC that more than 100 bodies were brought in over a two-day period. The nationwide death toll is feared to be far higher. The US-based Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) says it has verified the deaths of 490 protesters and 48 security personnel.
Another 10,600 people have been detained during the two weeks of unrest, the agency says.
At least 538 people have been killed in the violence surrounding demonstrations, it is reported.
Another rights monitor, the US-based Iran Human Rights group said on Sunday that at least 192 protesters had been killed.
Casualty figures varied between rights groups as they struggled to access people within Iran amid the internet blackout in the country, but all are expected to be undercounts.
The regime in power in Iran has not supplied its own figures and it was not possible to independently verify them.
The brutal crackdown has raised the likelihood of US intervention, with Trump saying he would “rescue” protesters if the Iranian government killed them. He reiterated his threat to intervene on Saturday night as the protests raged. “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!,” the US president said on the Truth Social platform.
The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, accused the US and Israel of being behind unrest in the country, saying they had brought in “terrorists” who were attacking public property. “Families, I ask you: do not allow your young children to join rioters and terrorists who behead people and kill others,” Pezeshkian said in a TV interview, appearing to adopt a harder line against demonstrations.
ends
On Sunday evening the Iranian government declared three days of national mourning for “martyrs” including members of the security forces killed in two weeks of protests, state television said.
Pezeshkian urged people to take part in a “national resistance march” of nationwide rallies on Monday to denounce the violence, which the government said was committed by “urban terrorist criminals”, state television reported.
The protest movement in Iran is the most significant unrest the country has experienced in years.
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