FILE - In this Saturday, Dec. 30, 2017 file photo taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran, a university student attends a protest inside Tehran... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Saturday, Dec. 30, 2017 file photo taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran, a university student attends a protest inside Tehran University while a smoke grenade is thrown by anti-riot Iranian police, in Tehran, Iran. Iran has seen... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Saturday, Dec. 30, 2017 file photo taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran, a university student attends a protest inside Tehran University while a smoke grenade is thrown by anti-riot Iranian police, in Tehran, Iran. Iran has seen... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Saturday, Dec. 30, 2017 file photo taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran, a university student attends a protest inside Tehran... (Associated Press) 
 
 TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Clashes overnight between protesters and security forces in Iran killed nine people, state television reported Tuesday, including some rioters who tried to storm a police station to steal weapons. 
 
 The demonstrations, the largest to strike Iran since its disputed 2009 presidential election, have seen six days of unrest across the country and a death toll of at least 20. 
 
 The protests began Thursday in Mashhad over Iran's weak economy and a jump in food prices and have expanded to several cities, with some protesters chanting against the government and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Hundreds of people have been arrested and a prominent judge on Tuesday warned that some could face death penalty trials. 
 
 State TV reported that six people were killed during an attack on a police station in the town of Qahdarijan. It reported that clashes were sparked by rioters who tried to steal guns from the police station. 
 
 State TV also said an 11-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man were killed in the town of Khomeinishahr, while a member of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard was killed in the town of Najafabad. It says all three were shot by hunting rifles, which are common in the Iranian countryside. 
 
 The towns are all in Iran's central Isfahan province, some 350 kilometers (215 miles) south of Tehran. 
 
 It wasn't immediately clear if the Revolutionary Guard member was the same fatality reported late Monday night by Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency. Mehr had said an assailant using a hunting rifle killed a policeman and wounded three others in Najafabad. 
 
 Monday marked the first night to see a fatality among Iran's security forces. 
 
 President Hassan Rouhani has acknowledged the public's anger over the Islamic Republic's flagging economy, though he and others warned that the government wouldn't hesitate to crack down on those it considers lawbreakers. All the protest rallies so far haven't received prior permission from the Interior Ministry, making them illegal under Iranian law. 
 
 That was echoed Monday by judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, who urged authorities to confront rioters, state TV reported. 
 
 "I demand all prosecutors across the country to get involved and the approach should be strong," he said. 
 
 In Tehran alone, 450 protesters have been arrested in the last three days, the semi-official ILNA news agency reported Tuesday. ILNA quoted Ali Asghar Nasserbakht, a security deputy governor of Tehran, as saying security forces arrested 200 protesters Saturday, 150 Sunday and 100 Monday. So far, authorities have not released a nationwide figure for arrests. 
 
 The head of Tehran's Revolutionary Court also reportedly warned Tuesday that arrested protesters could potentially face death penalty cases when they come to trial. 
 
 Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted Mousa Ghazanfarabadi as saying: "Obviously one of their charges can be Moharebeh," or waging war against God. That's a death penalty offense in Iran. 
 
 Ghazanfarabadi also was quoted as saying some protesters will come to trial soon on charges of acting against national security and damaging public properties. 
 
 Iran's Revolutionary Court handles cases involving alleged attempts to overthrow the government. 
 
 The protests began over Iran's economy, which has improved since the nuclear deal that saw Iran agree to limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the end of some international sanctions. Tehran now sells its oil on the global market and has signed deals to purchase tens of billions of dollars' worth of Western aircraft. 
 
 That improvement has not reached the average Iranian, however. Unemployment remains high, and official inflation has crept up to 10 percent again. A recent increase in egg and poultry prices by as much as 40 percent, which the government has blamed on a cull over avian flu fears, appears to have been the spark for the economic protests. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report. ||||| People in Iran have demonstrated against the government in the biggest wave of protests to hit the country in almost a decade. Here's what could be next for Iran and what the unrest means for more than 80 million Iranians. Video: Karan Deep Singh / Photo: Getty Images 
 
 WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is lobbying countries world-wide to support Iranians’ right to peaceful protest and is prepared to impose fresh sanctions if Iran’s government cracks down forcefully on the demonstrations spreading throughout the country, U.S. officials said. 
 
 The new U.S. sanctions would be imposed under existing authority to respond to human-rights violations and could be aimed at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in a bid to minimize doing economic harm to the Iranians carrying out the protests, the...
– The death toll in the protests sweeping Iran is now at least 20—and it could end up a lot higher under a recommendation from the head of Tehran's Revolutionary Court. According to Iran's semi-official Tasnim News Agency, Mousa Ghazanfarabadi said Tuesday that some of the hundreds of protesters arrested around the country could face the death penalty for "waging war against God," the AP reports. At least 450 people are believed to have been arrested in Tehran alone since Saturday. President Hassan Rouhani says he can understand public anger at the economy, but lawbreaking will not be tolerated. In other developments: Support from Trump. President Trump has tweeted in support of the protesters, and administration officials say they're urging other nations to support Iranians' right to protest. "We are encouraging all nations around the world to publicly condemn the government violence and to support the legitimate, basic rights of those protesting," Brian Hook, the State Department's director of policy planning, tells the Wall Street Journal.