(TNND) — Foreign militias are reportedly patrolling the streets of Tehran, the capital of Iran, in an effort to suppress ongoing protest activity.

Ali Safavi, with the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran and the U.S.-based Near East Policy Research, posted video on social media showing what he said were Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi militias toting machine guns in the back of pickup trucks.

Safavi told Fox News that the Iranian regime has increasingly turned to foreign fighters to maintain control of its capital amid “fierce clashes” with protesters.

Meanwhile, the Human Rights Activists News Agency reports the death toll from the Iranian protests has exceeded 4,500, with several thousand more deaths under investigation.

The HRANA said more than 26,000 have also been arrested, and widespread internet shutdowns and severe communication restrictions have continued.

Protests began late last month in Iran amid a crumbling currency and deeply troubled economy.

Energy and environmental crises were the backdrop, with water and energy shortages growing worse, Hussein Banai, an associate professor of international studies at Indiana University, recently told The National News Desk.

Most Iranians resent the regime, Banai said.

And many blame their own leaders for provoking the Israeli and U.S. strikes during last June’s "12-day war" against Iran, he said.

Banai said the Iranian public doesn’t understand why their leaders have expended so much on what they see as a needless nuclear program. And they’re angered that the regime has sent vast amounts of money and resources to violent proxies and anti-Israel groups in the region, such as Lebanon's Hezbollah group or the Houthis in Yemen, while they suffer back home.

Banai said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’s regime was fast approaching a tipping point.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi penned an op-ed this week in the Wall Street Journal, blaming “foreign and domestic terrorist actors” with agitating the protests and turning what he said were peaceful protests violent.

President Donald Trump previously warned Iran's government that the U.S. wouldn't sit idly by if it used deadly force against protesters, proclaiming America would “come to their rescue.”

Trump later urged protesters to keep pushing and take over Iranian institutions, declaring, "HELP IS ON ITS WAY," in a social media post as the death toll rose.

And this week, Trump told reporters that his warnings kept Iran from hanging hundreds of people.

But Araghchi threatened U.S. intervention with military retaliation in his WSJ op-ed.

“As Iranians grieve their loved ones and rebuild what has been destroyed, another threat looms: the final failure of diplomacy. Unlike the restraint Iran showed in June 2025, our powerful armed forces have no qualms about firing back with everything we have if we come under renewed attack,” Araghchi wrote. “This isn’t a threat, but a reality I feel I need to convey explicitly, because as a diplomat and a veteran, I abhor war. An all-out confrontation will certainly be ferocious and drag on far, far longer than the fantasy timelines that Israel and its proxies are trying to peddle to the White House.”