The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty soldiers in Alaska to prepare for a possible deployment to Minnesota, the site of large protests against the government’s deportation drive, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Sunday.

The army placed the units on prepare-to-deploy orders in case violence in the midwestern state escalates, the officials said, though it is not clear whether any of them will be sent.

President Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to use the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces if officials in the state do not stop protesters from targeting immigration officials after a surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

But if the troops are deployed, it is unclear whether the Trump administration would invoke the Insurrection Act. Even without invoking the act, a president can deploy active-duty forces for certain domestic purposes such as protecting federal property, which Trump cited as a justification for sending Marines to Los Angeles last year.

In addition to the active-duty forces, the Pentagon could also attempt to deploy newly created National Guard rapid-response forces for civil disturbances.

The Pentagon and the White House did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment on the order, which was first reported by ABC News.

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

The soldiers subject to deployment specialize in cold-weather operations and are assigned to two U.S. Army infantry battalions under the 11th Airborne Division, which is based in Alaska, the officials said.

Confrontations between residents and federal officers have become increasingly tense in Minneapolis, Minnesota’s most-populous city, after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good.

Trump, a Republican, has sent nearly 3,000 federal agents from ICE and Border Patrol to Minneapolis and neighboring St. Paul since early last week, as part of a wave of interventions, mostly to cities run by Democratic politicians.

He has said troop deployments in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Memphis and Portland, Oregon, are necessary to fight crime and protect federal property and personnel from protesters. But this month he said he was removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, which have faced legal setbacks and challenges.

Local leaders have accused the president of federal overreach and of exaggerating isolated episodes of violence to justify sending in troops.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, against whom the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation, has mobilized the state’s National Guard to support local law enforcement and emergency management agencies, the state Department of Public Safety posted on X on Saturday.

Trump has repeatedly invoked a scandal around the theft of federal funds intended for social-welfare programs in Minnesota as a rationale for sending in immigration agents. The president and administration officials have singled out the state’s community of Somali immigrants.

The Insurrection Act is a federal law that gives the president the power to deploy the military or federalize National Guard troops inside the U.S. to quell domestic uprisings.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart in Washington and Chandni Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Tom Hogue, William Mallard and Matthew Lewis)

At least 5,000 people have been killed in protests in Iran, including about 500 security personnel, an Iranian official in the region said on Sunday, citing verified figures and accusing “terrorists and armed rioters” of killing “innocent Iranians.”

Nationwide protests erupted on December 28 over economic hardship and swelled over two weeks into widespread demonstrations calling for the end of clerical rule – resulting in the deadliest unrest since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to intervene if protesters continued to be killed on the streets or were executed. In a social media post on Friday, he thanked Tehran’s leaders, saying they had called off scheduled executions of 800 people.

A day later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a public speech branded Trump a “criminal” for the casualties he inflicted on Iran by supporting protesters.

“We will not drag the country into war, but we will not let domestic or international criminals go unpunished,” Khamenei said, acknowledging “several thousand deaths” that he blamed on “terrorists and rioters” linked to the U.S. and Israel.

Iran’s judiciary indicated that executions may go ahead.

“A series of actions have been identified as Mohareb, which is among the most severe Islamic punishments,” Iranian judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir told a press conference on Sunday.

Mohareb, an Islamic legal term meaning to wage war against God, is punishable by death under Iranian law.

Trump said in an interview with Politico on Saturday: “it’s time to look for new leadership in Iran.”

U.S.-based rights group HRANA said on Saturday the death toll had reached 3,308, with another 4,382 cases under review. It said it had confirmed more than 24,000 arrests.

The Iranian official said the verified death toll was unlikely to “increase sharply,” adding “Israel and armed groups abroad” had supported and equipped those taking to the streets.

The clerical establishment regularly blames unrest on foreign enemies, including the U.S. and Israel, an arch foe of the Islamic Republic which launched military strikes in June.

The violent crackdown appears to have broadly quelled protests, according to residents and state media.

One resident in Tehran said he had witnessed riot police directly shooting at a group of protesters, who were mostly young men and women. Videos circulating on social media, some of which have been verified by Reuters, have shown security forces violently cracking down on demonstrations across the country.

The Iranian official, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue, also said some of the heaviest clashes and highest number of deaths were in the Iranian Kurdish areas in the country’s northwest.

Kurdish separatists have been active there and flare-ups have been among the most violent in past periods of unrest.

Three sources told Reuters on January 14 that armed Kurdish separatist groups sought to cross the border into Iran from Iraq in a sign of foreign entities potentially seeking to take advantage of instability.

“I am against this regime and have taken part in protests, but I witnessed some armed individuals disguised as protesters shooting at civilians. They were not ordinary protesters, they carried guns and knives,” an Iranian in a northwestern town told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The Norway-based Iranian Kurdish rights group Hengaw has said some of the heaviest clashes during protests that erupted in late December were in Kurdish areas in the northwest.

Getting information out of Iran has been complicated by internet blackouts, which were partly lifted for a few hours early on Saturday. But internet monitoring group NetBlocks said the blackout seemed to have later been reimposed.

Faizan Ali, a 40-year-old medical doctor from Lahore, said he had to cut short his trip to Iran to visit his Iranian wife in the central city of Isfahan as “there was no internet or communication with my family in Pakistan.”

“I saw a violent mob burning buildings, banks and cars. I also witnessed an individual stab a passer-by,” he told Reuters upon his arrival back in Lahore.

(Additional reporting by Mubasher Bukhari in Lahore,Writing by Parisa Hafezi, Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Alexander Smith)