US President Donald Trump renewed the threat of military action against Iran late Thursday as reports of rising death tolls from a brutal government crackdown on protests reach the outside world.

Trump delivered the threat while speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One on route to Washington from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“We have a massive fleet heading in that direction… and maybe we won’t have to use it… we have a lot of ships heading in that direction, just in case,” Trump said when speaking of a possible US reaction to ongoing unrest in the Islamic Republic.

“We’re watching Iran,” said Trump. “I’d rather not see anything happen but we’re watching them very closely.”

Trump had made similar threats before, while also urging Iranian protesters to take over Iranian institutions and pledging that “help is on its way.” But the tensions ebbed last week with the US president saying he had received word from Iran that “killing has stopped” and Tehran had no plans to execute detained protesters.

The Pentagon has not confirmed Trump’s statement about the US military fleet movements. However, the AP news agency reports the aircraft carrier group USS Abraham Lincoln and a fleet of associated vessels is currently in the Indian Ocean on its way to the Middle East from the South China Sea.

Iran was rocked by nationwide anti-government protests that began in late December and have yet to be entirely quelled; though the government’s brutal crackdown on dissenters has kept most Iranians at home, fearful of repression, arrest or death.

On January 8, Iranian government has decided to cut off all internet access and to block international phone use.

Internet monitor NetBlocks on Friday said that the blackout had now entered its third week.

The IT company Cloudflare said later Friday that nationwide data traffic when accessing websites has now reached around 30% of the usual level from before the blockade.

Limited or blocked communication has made it close to impossible to verify death tolls reported by various actors both inside and outside the country. On Wednesday, the Iranian government

— which has a historical tendency to underreport the numbers of dead protesters — said 3,117 people had been killed, including security forces.

Death tolls put out by international rights groups have ranged from 4,500 to more than 20,000.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana) — which has provided accurate numbers during previous unrest in Iran — said that over 5,000 people had been killed and more than 26,800 arrested. 

That death toll exceeds all other protests or unrest in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Hrana noted that not all those killed had been protesters, with several innocent women and children among the dead.

“All the evidence gradually emerging from inside Iran shows that the real number of people killed in the protests is far higher than the official figure,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights.

This organization reported verifying at least 3,428 deaths.

On Thursday, Iranian state television said that 200 further arrests had been made in western and southern provinces.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk urged Tehran on Friday to end its “brutal ⁠repression,” saying that children included the thousands killed.

“I call on the ‍Iranian authorities to reconsider, ​to ​pull back, and to end their brutal repression,” Turk told an emergency session of ‍the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

​He called the crackdown “a pattern of subjugation and ⁠overwhelming ​force that can never address people’s ‌grievances ‌and frustrations.”

The UN Human Rights Council also voted on Friday for a probe into human rights abuses in Iran. Twenty-five countries voted in favor of the motion with China, Pakistan and Iraq among the countries voting against the proposal.

Iran has accused Israel and the US of being behind the nationwide protest.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, labeled a terrorist entity by the US, Canada and Australia, has been accused of being on the frontline of the government crackdown.

On Thursday, the Iranian government, the army and the IRGC responded to Trump’s pressure campaign with warnings.

“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and dear Iran have their finger on the trigger, more prepared than ever, ready to carry out the orders and measures of the supreme commander-in-chief,” said IRGC commander, General Mohammad Pakpour.

Pakpour advised the US and Israel to “avoid any miscalculations,” saying they would otherwise face a “painful and regrettable fate.”

General Ali Abdollahi Aliabadi, who runs Iran’s Joint Command Headquarters and is under US sanctions, said “all US interests, bases and centers of influence” would become “legitimate targets” in the event of a US attack.

Last June, Iran, Israel and the US sparred in a 12-day war that ended with US long-range bombers attacking nuclear enrichment facilities in the Islamic Republic.

Trump on Thursday said future US attacks would make those carried out last summer “look like peanuts.”