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Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is looking to flee the country, according to US president Donald Trump, as nationwide protests demanding regime change continued into their 13th day.

At least 40 protesters and several police officers have been killed in the clashes, according to rights groups and local media, with 2,200 arrests so far.

Iranians have demonstrated in more than 100 cities and towns across the country, according to human rights groups.

Protesters have swarmed the streets in their thousands, shouting anti-regime slogans, while other footage showed cars and piles of motorbikes being set on fire.

Mr Trump said that the head of the Islamic Republic is “looking to go someplace” to escape, adding that Iran is on the “verge of collapse”.

And he warned that the US would hit the country hard if protesters were killed, saying he had “put Iran on notice”.

“There’s so many people protesting,” he said in an interview with Sean Hannity for Fox News. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like what’s happening right now, but I have put Iran on notice that if they start shooting at them – these people are totally unarmed people, and they love their country.

“They want something to happen. Look at their country. They’ve gone back 150 years. But I’ve warned them that if they do anything bad to these people, we’re going to hit them very hard. I’ve said it very loud and very clear, that’s what we’re going to do.”

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Iran and its population are cut off from the outside world after nationwide blackouts were imposed on Thursday and Friday. Footage that did leak out of the country showed buildings and shops in flames, and vehicles overturned. The protests are expected to continue despite the media crackdown.

Ayatollah Khamenei blamed Mr Trump for the demonstrations, accusing protesters of being “saboteurs” and “terrorist agents” working for the US and Israel, in a public address on Friday.

He said demonstrators were “ruining their own streets to make the president of another country happy” and that the Islamic Republic “will not tolerate mercenaries working for foreign powers”.

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The supreme leader has been Iran’s head of state since 1989, and is only the second to hold the position since the 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew the monarchy of Shah Reza Pahlavi and ushered in the theocratic government.

He insisted that the country would not back down, saying: “Everyone should know that the Islamic Republic came to power with the blood of hundreds of thousands of honourable people, and it will not back down in the face of saboteurs.”

Protests began a fortnight ago when Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late Shah, told Iranians on social media: “The eyes of the world are upon you. Take to the streets.”

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But the groundwork for the unrest was laid during previous months, amid a widening economic crisis that has seen the inflation rate hit 40 per cent.

The UN re-imposed sanctions in September, plunging Iran into economic hardship. The country’s rial currency has gone into freefall – it is now exchanging at 1.4m to $1.

Protests began springing up in December as merchants in Tehran expressed frustration at rising costs. The country is also reeling from a 12-day conflict last June, initiated by Israel, which saw US forces bomb Iranian nuclear facilities.

United Nations rights chief Volker Turk said he was “deeply disturbed by reports of violence” on the streets of Iran, and by the communications shutdown that had ensued.

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Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi shrugged off concerns about foreign military intervention, calling the risk of such involvement “very low”. But there is some concern that the US could become involved, after several warnings from Mr Trump and the unprecedented capture of Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro last weekend.

Iran has undergone several large waves of protest, including student demonstrations in 1999, a backlash to elections in 2009, unrest over the economy in 2019, and the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in 2022, which followed the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was killed in the custody of Iran’s morality police.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, warned on Friday that a violent crackdown on the protests would be “unacceptable”.

“The Iranian people are fighting for their future. By ignoring their rightful demands, the regime shows its true colours,” Ms Kallas wrote in a post on X/Twitter.

“Images from Tehran reveal a disproportionate and heavy-handed response by the security forces. Any violence against peaceful demonstrators is unacceptable. Shutting down the internet while violently suppressing protests exposes a regime afraid of its own people.”

But Iran’s judiciary has promised that punishment for rioters will be “decisive, maximal, and without legal leniency”.