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‘These are thugs and animals’: Trump blasts Iran over execution of teen wrestler, two others

March 21, 2026 | | Print Article

President Donald Trump on Friday slammed the “thugs and animals” in Iran for executing more innocent protesters.

The Iranian government on Thursday executed three men, one of them a 19-year-old wrestler, for the supposed “crime” of participating in anti-government protests two months ago.

“Rights groups said the trio were executed without a fair trial and had given confessions under torture,” according to CBS News.

Responding to these veritable murders on Friday, Trump ripped into the Iranian government while simultaneously touting the success of the ongoing Israeli-U.S. campaign against the rogue regime.

“I don’t know if you could possibly get hit harder, but these are thugs and animals and horrible people,” he said outside the White House. “But you can’t hit anybody harder than we’ve hit them. But I’m not surprised, they executed three young people for protesting.”

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Earlier Friday, Republican Rep. Carlos Gimenez told CNN that the president needs to fiercely retaliate for the executions, “especially since it’s so public.”

“I mean, we think that the Iranian regime may have killed up to 50,000 people during those protests,” he added. “People are simply asking for regime change, people simply asking for freedom. And that’s what this Iranian regime does. And that’s why it’s so dangerous.”

Continuing his remarks from the White House, the president also dismissed concerns about the Strait of Hormuz by alleging that access to it is only needed by other countries, not the United States.

“You know, we don’t use the Strait,” he said. “The United States, we don’t need it. Europe needs it. Korea, Japan, China, a lot of other people. So they’ll have to get involved a little bit on that one. … It would be nice if those countries would get involved.”

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The remarks about the deceased protesters came a week after Trump admitted in a Fox News radio interview that protesters were gravely risking their lives going up against the Basij, a plainclothes militia tightly affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to The New York Times.

“You just mentioned to me a group of people that go around with machine guns and shoot them down, and they say, ‘Anybody protests, we’re going to kill you in the streets,'” Trump said. “So I really think that’s a big hurdle to climb for people that don’t have weapons.”

“I think it’s a very big hurdle. So that’ll happen, but it probably will be, maybe not immediately. Who’s going to do that? They literally have people in the streets with machine guns, machine gunning people down if they want to protest, OK?” he added.

“These are bad people. They go out shooting protesters. You’re a protester. They shoot you right through the head,” he continued.

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Meanwhile, the Iranian government has also started threatening tourists worldwide.

“From now on, based on the information we have about you, even parks, recreational areas, and tourist destinations anywhere in the world will no longer be safe for you,” Iranian military spokesman Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi said on state TV this week, according to the New York Post.

Vivek Saxena
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