Iran protests live: EU warns airlines to avoid Iranian airspace as Trump considers US strike

The director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency David Barnea arrived in the US on Friday to discuss the ongoing unrest in Iran, according to reports by Axios.

He is expected to meet White House special envoy Steve Witkoff who is overseeing communication between the US and Iran.

Donald Trump has thanked Iran for cancelling 800 executions of protesters which he said had been scheduled.

“I greatly respect the fact that all scheduled hangings, which were to take place yesterday (Over 800 of them), have been cancelled by the leadership of Iran. Thank you!” the US president wrote on Truth Social.

Iran has not publicly announced plans for such executions or said it had cancelled them.

The European Union’s aviation regulator urged the bloc’s airlines to avoid flying in Iran’s airspace in an advisory issued on Friday.

“The presence and possible use of a wide range of weapons and air-defence systems, combined with unpredictable state responses …. creates a high risk to civil flights operating at all altitudes and flight levels.” the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) said in a bulletin on potential conflict zones.

With ongoing tensions and the potential for U.S. military action, which has placed Iranian air defence forces on a heightened state of alert, there is an increased likelihood of misidentification within Iranian airspace, the advisory said.

Despite reports that the protests have largely died down in Iran, there are still indications of unrest in some areas.

Norway-based Kurdish human rights group Hengaw reported that a female nurse was killed by direct gunfire from government forces during protests in Karaj, west of Tehran.

The state-affiliated Tasnim news outlet reported that rioters had set fire to a local education office in Falavarjan County, in central Isfahan Province, on Thursday.

An elderly resident of a town in Iran’s northwestern region, where many Kurdish Iranians live and which has been the focus for many of the biggest flare-ups, said sporadic protests had continued, though not as intensely.

Describing violence earlier in the protests, she said: “I have not seen scenes like that before.”

Video circulating online, which Reuters was able to verify as having been recorded in a forensic medical center in Tehran, showed dozens of bodies lying on floors and stretchers, most in bags but some uncovered. Reuters could not verify the date of the video.

Iran’s exiled crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, has accused the Tehran regime of killing an Iranian protester “every 14 seconds” as he declared the “slaughter has not stopped”.

Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last Shah, said that the Islamic Republic “will fall soon” and called on the international community to support the Iranian people in the face of a brutal crackdown.

His comments came after the US moved the nuclear-powered USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier to the Middle East, a signal of mounting tensions between Washington and Iran.

Trump has warned the regime to halt the killing of protesters but appeared to step back from military action earlier this week, saying he had received assurances that planned executions were not taking place.

“The process of rebuilding the country and climbing out of the deep pit this regime has unfortunately created – and the dire living conditions people face – requires a sound approach: a healthy economy, transparency, and the involvement of competent professionals,” says Pahlavi.

When questioned about how long it might take to see a regime change in Iran, he is emphatic: “The sooner, the better. People want to be free as soon as possible.”

Reza Pahlavi has said he has “pride” in being the descendant of Cyrus the Great who helped rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and confirmed he is committed to establishing “cordial relations” with Israel.

He said he visited Israel two years ago and would like to create the “Cyrus Accords” in a similar vein to Trump’s Abraham Accords, which attempted to normalise relations with Israel in the region.

The Islamic Republic has persistently rejected attempts to work with Israel due to differences over the rights of Palestinians. Their position is part of their role in the “Axis of Resistance”, formed of countries united by opposition to US and Israeli influence.