TEHRAN, Iran -- Officials in Iran's government pledged late Monday to crack down even harder on protests around the country as the death toll rose to 13 people.
"We will not at all let [an] insecure situation to continue in Tehran," Brig. Gen Esmaeil Kowsari, deputy chief of the main Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps base in Tehran, told the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency. "If this situation continues, the officials will definitely make some decisions, and at that point this business will be finished."
An Iranian police officer became the protests' 13th fatality late Monday. Iran's semiofficial Mehr news agency said a gunman used a hunting rifle to shoot the policeman in the central city of Najafabad, about 200 miles south of Iran's capital, Tehran.
Two protesters were reported killed on Monday, and Iranian state television said 10 "armed protesters" were killed Sunday night trying to overrun military bases and police stations. The report did not say where the attacks took place.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani pleaded for calm Monday as Iranians took to the streets.
On Twitter, he wrote: "People want to talk about economic problems, corruption and lack of transparency in the function of some of the organs and want the atmosphere to be more open. The requests and demands of the people should be taken note of."
Rouhani also stressed Monday that Iran "has seen many similar events and passed them easily."
But others in the government threatened to widen its security clampdown. The deputy interior minister, Hossein Zolfaghari, told the semiofficial Jamaran website on Monday that "from tonight, the unrest will be controlled more seriously."
That was echoed Monday by judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, who urged authorities to confront rioters, state TV reported.
"I demand all prosecutors across the country to get involved, and the approach should be strong," he said.
The extent of the unrest and security forces' efforts to quell them has been impossible to assess because of state restrictions on the media, but protests have been confirmed in at least 20 locations across the country. The semiofficial Iranian Labor News Agency said about 200 protesters in Tehran were arrested on Saturday alone.
The chief executive of Iran's most popular social media site, Telegram, said Sunday that authorities blocked access to most Iranians after the company refused to shut down a number of "peacefully protesting channels." Iranian state television said Sunday that access to Telegram and Instagram would be limited temporarily as a safety measure. The government has also limited access to Twitter, and it banned Facebook in 2009.
President Donald Trump, who has been tweeting in support of the protesters, continued on New Year's Day, describing Iran as "failing at every level despite the terrible [2015 nuclear] deal made with them by the Obama Administration."
When the protests -- the largest in Iran since 2009 -- started Thursday in the city of Mashhad, demonstrators chanted slogans about the weak economy.
But as the protests spread, they have taken on a far more political cast. Increasingly, they are being directed at Iran's entire political establishment. Some demonstrators have even called for the death of Rouhani and of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who hasn't commented publicly on the protests.
Some Iranian politicians have denounced the protests as "riots," while others have acknowledged that the widespread frustrations at their root can no longer be ignored.
On Monday in Tehran, the atmosphere was tense and security forces were out in large numbers. Protests occurred sporadically, with people shouting slogans and leaving. State television showed footage of fires and burned cars.
Protests have taken place in cities including Karaj, Qazvin, Qaemshahr, Dorud and Tuyserkan, state television said. All of those cities are in rural provinces that have long been viewed as supporters of authorities.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling the protesters "brave" and "heroic," said in a video posted to YouTube on Monday that the demonstrators sought freedom, justice and "the basic liberties that have been denied to them for decades."
He criticized Iran's response to the protests and also chided European governments for watching "in silence" as the protests turn violent.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson issued a statement late Monday saying that "there should be meaningful debate about the legitimate and important issues the protesters are raising and we look to the Iranian authorities to permit this."
"We regret the loss of life that has occurred in the protests in Iran, and call on all concerned to refrain from violence and for international obligations on human rights to be observed," he said.
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel also said in a statement that "after the confrontation of the past days it is all the more important for all sides to refrain from violent action." Both Britain and Germany were part of the 2015 nuclear deal.
Iran's economy has improved since the deal, in which Iran agreed to limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the end of some international sanctions. Tehran now sells its oil on the global market and has signed deals to purchase tens of billions of dollars' worth of Western aircraft.
That improvement has not reached the average Iranian, however. Unemployment remains high, and official inflation has crept up to 10 percent. A recent increase in egg and poultry prices by as much as 40 percent, which the government has blamed on a cull over avian flu fears, appears to have sparked the economic protests.
Information for this article was contributed by Thomas Erdbrink of The New York Times; by Nasser Karimi and Jon Gambrell of The Associated Press; and by Golnar Motevalli of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 01/02/2018