The estimate from a military official of people dead from protests is considerably lower than the toll reported by a U.S.-based group that has been closely tracking the protests.
The organization had displayed Iran's national flag on social media without the emblem of the Islamic Republic to show "support for the women in Iran" ahead of the two nations' soccer match.
Voria Ghafouri, a prominent player who wasn't chosen to go to the World Cup, is an outspoken critic of Iran's authorities. Reports of his arrest came ahead of Friday's Iran-Wales World Cup match.
The load — enough for a dozen medium-range ballistic missiles — was hidden among bags of fertilizer on a wooden ship called a dhow. It likely was bound for Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
The country's theocracy, which came to power 43 years ago, faces one of its stiffest challenges amid weeks of widespread protests after the death of a woman arrested by the country's morality police.
India's Hindu conservatives are championing Iran's female Muslim protesters. But they oppose Muslim students in southern India who are fighting for the right to wear the hijab in schools.
"Jin, jiyan, azadi!" — "Woman, life, freedom!" — has become the rallying cry for people in Iran and beyond who are protesting the death of Mahsa Amini in Iranian police custody.
Chanting crowds marched in the streets of Berlin, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles on Saturday in a show of international support for demonstrators facing a violent government crackdown in Iran.
Competitive climber Elnaz Rekabi received a hero's welcome on her return to Tehran Wednesday, after competing in South Korea without wearing a mandatory headscarf required of Iranian female athletes
Media reports warned she may have been forced by Iranian officials to leave early from a competition in South Korea and could face arrest back home, which Tehran quickly denied.
Anti-government demonstrations erupted Saturday in several locations across Iran as the most sustained protests in years against a deeply entrenched theocracy entered their fourth week.
Part of the Bakhtiari people, they live as their ancestors did, migrating between pastures in western and southwestern Iran. Women play a vital role, coping with hardships and persevering.
In separate interviews with NPR, the U.S. special envoy to Iran responds to that country's foreign minister on Iranians' protests over a woman's death, and the state of nuclear negotiations.
