President Donald Trump and Iranian officials traded threats after he threatened to intervene on behalf of protesters.
Iran has been racked by protests over the past several days around deteriorating economic conditions in the country, made worse by a growing water crisis and severe sanctions against Tehran. On Friday morning, Trump issued a threat to intervene if Tehran cracked down violently on the protests.
“If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” he warned in a post on Truth Social, signing off with his name in all caps.
Ali Larijani, a former speaker of Parliament who is now the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, claimed Trump’s comments showed the U.S. and Israel were behind the protests.
“With the statements by Israeli officials and @realDonaldTrump, what has been going on behind the scenes is now clear,” he wrote in a post on X. “We distinguish between the stance of the protesting shopkeepers and the actions of disruptive actors, and Trump should know that U.S. interference in this internal matter would mean destabilizing the entire region and destroying America’s interests.”
Larijani then issued an implicit threat against U.S. soldiers in the region, saying Americans should be “mindful of their soldiers’ safety.”
Several people have already been killed in the protests, with Tehran admitting several deaths and human rights groups tallying anywhere from five to eight deaths by Friday.
One of the most controversial deaths was Amirhesam Khodayarifard, who died in Lorestan province under unclear circumstances. Tehran claimed he was a member of the government’s Basij militia and killed by protesters, while human rights groups claimed he was a protester killed by security forces, and that Tehran was pressuring his family to falsely declare him a member of the Basij militia.
Iran has been plagued by crippling social instability for the past few years, with massive protests breaking out almost annually. The worst of these followed the death of the Kurdish-Iranian teenager Mahsa Amini, who died under unclear circumstances after being arrested by the government’s morality police. Hundreds were killed over several months, and thousands more were arrested.
The latest round of protests commenced on Sunday, started by shopkeepers angry over economic turmoil brought about by the collapse of the Iranian rial. These protests are unique for many protesters’ repeated appeals to the deposed Pahlavi dynasty, the subject of several chants published on social media.
The protests have also brought sympathy from some officials, however. The reform-minded President Masoud Pezeshkian went so far as to tell reporters on Thursday, “If people are unhappy with us, we are the ones at fault.”
TRUMP WARNS IRAN THAT US IS ‘LOCKED AND LOADED’ TO ‘RESCUE’ ANY ‘PEACEFUL PROTESTERS’ HARMED
“We are the ones who solve people’s problems; we are not the ones who create problems for people,” he said.
The protests are occurring amid broader discussion between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over whether to launch new strikes against Iran to disrupt its nuclear or ballistic missile programs.
