President Donald Trump has warned Iran that the United States would come to the rescue of peaceful protesters if Iranian security forces killed them. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Iranian officials responded with their own counter-threats. This latest tension follows the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities in June.
Protests have spread across Iran in recent weeks. These started with merchants in bazaars who had become enraged over economic hardship. Next, students walked out of universities. Now, everyday people from all walks of life are taking to the streets.
There’s no question that economic conditions are severe in Iran. Inflation hovers around 40%, and Iran’s rial currency has depreciated to approximately 1.4 million rials per U.S. dollar. International sanctions imposed over Iran’s nuclear program and support for terrorist groups combine with systemic corruption and economic mismanagement to make life abysmal.
Thus far, at least seven protesters are known to have been killed by security forces. Independent monitors suggest that the real toll is higher, however, with conflicting accounts of who died and how. Arrests are also increasingly widespread, with authorities accusing protesters of monarchist sympathies and foreign ties. They want to present domestic frustration as a product only of illegitimate external sabotage.
Iranians have been here before. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime survived earlier protest waves in 2009, 2017, 2019, and again in 2022 by the heavy use of force. Protesters were sentenced to death on charges such as “waging war against God”, with hangings carried out to instill fear. Indeed, Iran’s use of executions has doubled this year. The Iran Human Rights group says it has verified at least 1,500 executions up to the start of December, a figure it stresses is conservative given the regime’s lack of transparency. The real number is likely far higher.
Sadly, democratic governments have largely limited their responses to these injustices to statements of concern. But Iran has found allies in its authoritarianism. From Belarus and Syria to Georgia and Serbia, repressive governments have reinforced each other. The result is that authoritarian regimes have grown more aggressive, while those defending liberties have become increasingly unsure that their righteous resistance will lead anywhere.
During the Cold War, the U.S. treated its countering of domestic repression by its enemies as part of its containment strategy. Washington viewed crackdowns on dissent as signs of weakness that warranted increased American pressure. Support for dissidents raised the cost of authoritarian rule and limited its reach. That approach, however, has largely disappeared.
Trump’s statement may change that calculation. It does more than any U.S. presidential statement in the past two decades to signal to those resisting repression in Iran that they are not entirely on their own. That America might come to their defense. It thus tells the oppressors in Tehran that violence may cost them dearly. It’s a colossal cause for inspiration for those currently on the streets.
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Trump has introduced ambiguity in U.S. policy. He doesn’t promise intervention, but neither does he exclude it. That ambiguity over what might come out of Trump’s White House makes regimes afraid of crossing lines.
But there is a danger: if Washington issues this warning and does nothing when Tehran kills more protesters, it won’t just fail Iranians. It will teach every dictatorship watching that Trump’s threats mean nothing, undermining the credibility of the American president as well as U.S. power.