European diplomats scold Tehran for crackdown on Iranian protestors

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul denounced Iran’s harsh treatment of protestors as demonstrations across the theocratic Islamist country entered a second week. 

“Peacefully expressing their opinion is their [Iran citizens’] right,” Wadephul wrote on X Thursday. “I therefore condemn the excessive use of violence against peaceful demonstrators and call on the Iranian authorities to adhere to their international obligations.”

Protests in Iran erupted in the final week of 2025, driven by public anger over the country’s brutal economic situation. Within days, however, they morphed into open opposition to the country’s clerical leadership.

Iranian human rights group Hrana said at least 34 protestors and two state security officers had been killed by Tuesday, with at least 2,000 protestors arrested. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday appealed to security forces not to target protestors.

Hours after Wadephul’s appeal, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola also backed the protestors. “We know the change is underway,” she said. “The people of Iran are not protesting. They are crying out. Europe hears them, the world hears them, and they will only get louder.”

“To the people of Iran, your pride and dignity as a people determined to build a great free nation will inspire generations in Iran and around the world,” she added.

Conservative German MP Roderich Kiesewetter called for tougher action, urging EU officials to expand sanctions on Iran’s clerical regime and to list the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard state security force as a terrorist organization.

“The time for diplomatic restraint toward the terrorist mullahs must be over,” Kiesewetter told POLITICO. “We now have to move from talk to decisive action and speak the language the regime understands: toughness and isolation.”

French media reported on Thursday that Iranian officials have begun seeking French visas for their families.

“It is an intolerable situation that the children of the regime’s elite shop in Paris while their fathers issue shoot-to-kill orders at home,” Kiesewetter stated. “This calls for an immediate visa ban.”

Shahin Gobadi, a member of the foreign affairs committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition of Iranian dissident groups based in France and Albania, agreed the Revolutionary Guard should be placed on the EU’s terrorism list and slammed the bloc for its complacency.

“The EU response, specifically its silence, has been totally unacceptable,” he told POLITICO.

U.S. President Donald Trump warned Tehran last week that the United States would “come to the rescue” if Iranian authorities continued to “shoot and violently kill peaceful protestors.” Trump’s remarks came a day before the U.S. took action in Venezuela.

POLITICO was unable to reach the Iranian government for comment; the Netblocks watchdog organization said the country is suffering a partial internet outage. Iran’s Embassy to the EU in Brussels did not immediately respond to a request for comment.