President Donald Trump drew a red line on Jan. 2, warning that if Iran’s rulers answered mass protests with mass murder, the United States would respond militarily. Since then, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called the bluff. The regime’s security forces have cracked down, killing thousands and detaining more.
That leaves Trump with a decision that matters beyond Tehran. If the U.S. allows a dictator to murder civilians after a direct presidential warning, as President Barack Obama did after drawing a red line in Syria, America will lose its ability to deter. American presidential warnings will be seen as empty noise. In the Middle East, weakness is not interpreted as caution but as permission.
A full war to change the Iranian regime would be folly and is doubtless not being contemplated. But Trump must take measured military action and soon.
Sanctions alone won’t cut it. Iran is already heavily sanctioned. The Islamic Republic has spent decades learning how to shift pain onto ordinary people while keeping the regime’s enforcers paid and armed. Regime members and their families are currently exporting billions of dollars to where they hope the money will be safe and waiting for them if the mullahs are toppled. That money shows that sanctions do not hurt the tyrants.
A cyberattack is useful, but cyberspace alone will not stop bullets. And negotiations while the regime is mowing down civilians would be a lifeline for Khamenei’s thugs, not an inducement to stop.
Trump has said that “help is on the way,” and if his credibility is to mean anything in the future, there must be consequences for the bloody ayatollahs and the Islamic Republic they have tyrannously misruled for 47 years.
The key is for the American military strike to be smart.
It should target specific regime figures and assets tied directly to the crackdown, such as internal security headquarters, commanders, and the logistical nodes that sustain repression. Done properly, such strikes incapacitate those perpetrating the crackdown and send a simple message. The regime can defeat its people, or it can keep its infrastructure and leadership intact, but it cannot do both.
Trump could go further. He could include precision attacks on facilities used to organize and sustain the crackdown, paired with cyber operations that disrupt communications and command-and-control. The aim is not directly to topple the regime, although that would be a happy consequence. If it did happen, it would still be a bottom-up popular rebellion, not an American-instigated war that achieved it. The aim is to raise the cost of killing civilians, degrade the regime’s capacity to do so, and force Tehran to choose between de-escalation and the steady destruction of its coercive machinery.
This is the right approach because it is strong without being reckless. It punishes brutality without assuming a fantasy outcome.
The alternative, a major air campaign aimed at “fundamentally weakening” the regime, is not a strategy. It’s a gamble. It would invite serious retaliation: missile salvos, terrorist strikes against U.S. interests and allies, cyberattacks on civilian infrastructure, and efforts to disrupt global energy shipping. Worst of all, it might not help the protesters. Revolutions usually succeed when security forces fracture, not when the U.S. bombs from the sky and hopes the political puzzle solves itself.
Major strikes could also corner Khamenei into irrational escalation. A paranoid theocrat who believes his “divine mission” is collapsing is not the kind of leader America should assume will act with restraint. If he thinks the regime is facing extinction, he may do something drastic simply because he has nothing left to lose.
That is why Trump should start measured, with the option to escalate later.
The deterrence logic is simple. Begin with limited strikes that are unmistakable but controlled. Deliver an ultimatum privately and publicly. If the killings continue, expand the target set. If Iran retaliates in the region, hit harder. But do not begin with the most extreme option and pretend escalation risk doesn’t exist.
This isn’t just about Iran. It is about credibility. Trump has political capital right now because he has demonstrated his willingness to act. He has cultivated the perception, rare in modern American foreign policy, that his warnings are not empty. That perception has value. It restrains adversaries before the first shot is fired.
If Trump backs down after issuing a clear threat, Khamenei won’t be the only one taking notes. Every hostile regime with an interest in testing American resolve will learn the same lesson: wait out the headlines, absorb the statements, and keep moving.
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Measured military action is not war. It’s enforcement. Trump set the line. Iran crossed it. Now the only question is whether the American president intends to be taken seriously.
Red lines that are not enforced are worse than no red lines at all. They don’t prevent violence, they invite it.