In cafes and restaurants tucked down narrow side streets, amid billowing smoke from shisha pipes and slim cigarettes, the conversation among Iranians in the Turkish border city of Van turns to US President Donald Trump.
“He absolutely will strike,” said one woman with sharply drawn eyebrows, sitting in the warm glow of a heater blasting at full capacity against the minus-5ºC temperatures outside. “It will be in the coming days.”
Mr Trump has threatened many times to punish Iran in retaliation to a violent crackdown on protests in the country, in which at least 3,000 people have been killed, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists news agency. He initially said Iran would “have to pay hell” if security forces killed protesters, even as the death toll among demonstrators rose. He later said he would take “strong action” if protesters were executed, before insisting that he had been given assurances that this would not happen.
On Thursday, the US envoy to the UN said that for Washington “all options were on the table” to end the killings in Iran. Iranian government officials have said that they would respond to any US strike on the country.
Shop bear signs in Farsi in the Turkish border city of V
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