Trump sent guns to Iranian protesters through Kurdish militias
President says Kurds must have kept weapons that the US had dispatched to aid demonstrators
Donald Trump has claimed he sent guns to Iranian protesters via Kurdish militias.
The US president said he had dispatched “a lot of guns” to demonstrators, whom he had previously promised to save from crackdowns by the regime, but believed that the Kurds “kept them”.
“We sent them a lot of guns. We sent them through the Kurds. And I think the Kurds kept them,” Mr Trump told Fox News on Sunday.
“We sent guns to the protesters, a lot of them. And I think the Kurds took the guns.”
In January, Mr Trump declared “help is on the way” and that the US was “locked and loaded” to help Iranians protesting against the regime.
At the start of the year, Iran was rocked by the largest anti-government protests and riots in decades, as people took to the streets in anger of rising inflation, corruption and a sharp collapse of Iran’s currency.
Protesters face off against security forces in Mashhad Credit: Vahid/X
At the time, Donald Trump threatened to “get involved” in the unrest, warning that he would hit Iran “very, very hard, where it hurts” if the regime’s forces continued killing protesters.
Witnesses described protesters, including children, being shot at close range or severely beaten by Tehran’s security forces.
It was never reported at the time that he tried to arm the demonstrators. It is believed that up to 30,000 civilians may have been killed by government forces.