AI-generated videos purportedly depicting protests in Iran have flooded the web, researchers said Wednesday, as social media users push hyper-realistic deepfakes to fill an information void amid the country's internet restrictions.

US disinformation watchdog NewsGuard said it identified seven AI-generated videos depicting the Iranian protests -- created by both pro- and anti-government actors -- that have collectively amassed some 3.5 million views across online platforms.

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON, Jan 14 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Iranian opposition figure Reza Pahlavi "seems very nice" but expressed uncertainty over whether Pahlavi would be able to muster support within Iran to eventually take over.

WASHINGTON, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Wednesday "there is no plan" by Iran to hang people, when asked about the anti-government protests in the Middle Eastern nation.

"There is no plan for hanging," the foreign minister told Fox News in an interview on the "Special Report with Bret Baier" show. "Hanging is out of the question," he said.

According to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights Society, hangings are common in Iranian prisons.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Chris Reese)

By Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON, Jan 14 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he has been told that killings in Iran's crackdown on nationwide protests were subsiding and that he believes there is currently no plan for large-scale executions, even as tensions between Tehran and Washington remain high.

Asked who told him that the killings stopped, Trump described them as "very important sources on the other side."

Around 100 people rallied in a central Israeli city on Wednesday in support of Iranian protesters, as the Islamic republic is shaken by more than two weeks of anti-government demonstrations.

Demonstrators in Holon, a city near Tel Aviv home to a large Persian Jewish community, waved Israeli flags next to Iranian flags from before the Islamic revolution in 1979.

"Be the voice of the Iranian people," a sign read in Hebrew and Persian.

ROME, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Italy has strongly renewed an appeal to its citizens to leave Iran because of the security situation in the country, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

There are around 600 Italians in Iran, most of them in the Tehran area, it added.

With Iran's leadership trying to quell the worst domestic unrest the Islamic Republic has ever faced, Tehran is seeking to deter U.S. President Donald Trump's repeated threats to intervene on behalf of anti-government protesters.

By Harshita Mary Varghese, Jaspreet Singh and Aditya Soni

Jan 14 (Reuters) - A little-known offline messaging app launched by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has emerged as a key lifeline for Ugandans cut off from the internet ahead of a contentious election that could extend President Yoweri Museveni's four-decade rule.

Bitchat has surged to the top of Apple and Google app stores in the African country after clocking more than 28,000 downloads this year, according to research firm Apptopia. That marks a nearly fourfold increase over the previous two months combined.

Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei, a pillar of its theocratic system since the inception of the Islamic revolution, has seen off a succession of crises throughout his rule with a mixture of repression and strategic manoeuvring but now could be facing his biggest challenge.

Khamenei, now 86, has dominated Iran for the last three-and-a-half decades since taking on the post for life in 1989 as leader of the Islamic revolution following the death of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

A US-backed plan to end the war in Gaza was moving into its second phase, Washington's top negotiator said Wednesday, as Palestinian factions agreed on the make-up of a post-war governing committee.

President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff wrote on X that phase two of the US leader's 20-point plan would shift the Palestinian territory "from ceasefire to demilitarization, technocratic governance and reconstruction".

Phase one, launched in October, involved a ceasefire, a hostage-prisoner exchange, partial Israeli withdrawal and a surge of humanitarian aid.

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 14 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday asked U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to continue providing monthly reports on any further attacks on vessels in the Red Sea by Yemen's Houthis, spurring Russia to taunt the United States.

"We believe that amid present-day realities, the Security Council would be well advised to monitor attacks on commercial transport in the Caribbean, not the Red Sea," Russia's Deputy U.N. Ambassador Anna Evstigneeva told the 15-member body.