ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – US President Donald Trump on Wednesday praised Iran for halting the execution of eight women, a sentence Tehran said was not in store for the pictured individuals, claiming Iranian leaders were “respecting” his request for their sparing.

Trump on Tuesday urged Tehran to halt the executions of eight women linked to January anti-government protests, saying their release would be a “great start” to negotiations ahead of a potential second round of US-Iran talks in Islamabad that was later boycotted by Iran. 

Following the comments, Iran’s judiciary on Tuesday denied Trump’s remarks of eight women facing execution as “fake news,” saying some of the women “have been released.” 

“The women who he claimed to be on the verge of execution, some of them have been released, while others face charges that would at most result in imprisonment if the convictions are upheld,” the Iranian judiciary’s Mizan Online website said.

The Norway-based Iran Human Rights organization said that two of the eight individuals, namely Golnaz Naraghi and Venus Hosseininejad, were released on bail in March.

Trump's contradictory follow-up statement on Wednesday said, “I have just been informed that the eight women protestors who were going to be executed tonight in Iran will no longer be killed,” he wrote on the Truth Social platform. 

The US president added that four of the group“will be released immediately,” while the other four “will be sentenced to one month in prison.”

“I very much appreciate that Iran, and its leaders, respected my request, as President of the United States, and terminated the planned execution,” Trump said.

The comments followed his extension of the ceasefire with Iran hours before its initial expiry, at Pakistan’s request.

The photos of the eight Iranian women have drawn widespread attention on social media in recent days following reports that alleged January protesters could face imminent executions.

The attention began earlier in April, when Western media first reported that the first group of women was among those facing possible execution over alleged participation in the January protests.

Iran has repeatedly referred to the recent nationwide protests as “foreign plots” and labeled the demonstrators “terrorist elements” working for the US and Israel, labeling the uprising as a continuation of June’s 12-day war with Israel.

In the aforementioned conflict, Iranian authorities carried out a wave of arrests on alleged espionage charges and executed several men convicted of spying for Israel’s intelligence services.