The UN Security Council has met in an emergency meeting on the situation in Iran at the request of the United States.
US representative Mike Walz said that President Donald Trump stands behind the protests and reiterated that Trump believes all options are on the table. Walz rejected Iranian allegations of a foreign plot, saying that the Iranian authorities are afraid of their own people.
Ahead of the UN meeting, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi spoke by phone with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. According to the Iranian Tasnim news agency, Araqchi reiterated that the peaceful protests had turned violent due to "interference by terrorist elements". Guterres has ruled out military action and stressed that such action could lead to regional escalation.
Russian UN envoy Vasily Nebenzia accused the Americans of trying to create hysteria around the Islamic Republic. According to him, what is happening there is another example of using the methods of color revolutions. Nebenzia also warned that Washington's actions could lead to "bloody chaos" throughout the region, spreading beyond.
Iran's deputy representative Gholamhossein Darzi accused not only the Americans but also the Israelis of trying to achieve the goals they missed during the 12-day war against the Islamic Republic last summer.
Families of those killed in the protests in Iran told the BBC that authorities were demanding large sums of money from them to return their bodies for burial.
The Persian service of the media corporation said it had learned from multiple sources that the bodies were being stored in morgues and hospitals and that security forces would not release them unless their relatives gave money.
At least 2,435 people have been killed in more than two weeks of protests across the country.
A family in the northern city of Rasht told the BBC that security forces had demanded 700 million tomans, the local name for the Iranian rial, or $5,000, to release the body of their loved one. It was being kept in the morgue of Pursina Hospital, along with at least 70 other dead protesters.
Meanwhile, in Tehran, the family of a Kurdish seasonal construction worker went to collect his body, but were told they had to pay 1 billion tomans ($7,000) to get it. Relatives say they cannot afford the fee and have been forced to leave.
A construction worker in Iran typically earns less than $100 a month.
In some cases, hospital staff have called relatives of the deceased to warn them in advance to come before security forces can extort money from them.