President Trump warned Friday in a social media post that if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.”
Mr. Trump offered no further comment on Iran or how the U.S. might intervene to protect protesters in the country in the post on his Truth Social network, which was published just before 3 a.m. Eastern, but he said: “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
It came hours after reports that at least six people have been killed amid nearly a week of escalating protests in Iran. The unrest began last weekend as business owners voiced frustration at the dire economic conditions in the Islamic Republic.
Iran has been plagued for years by staggering hyperinflation, fueled by Western sanctions imposed over the hardline clerical government’s nuclear program and backing for militant groups across the region.
Videos and photos from Tehran and other cities posted on social media have shown protesters marching through streets from early this week, often chanting anti-government, pro-monarchy slogans and sometimes clashing violently with security forces.
Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute who studies Iran, told CBS News the current round of protests were triggered in part by shopkeepers upset by Iran’s weakening currency. Shopkeepers tend to be a fairly conservative group, he noted, but many have warned that the country’s economic troubles have made operating their businesses untenable.
“They don’t come out in the streets unless they really have to,” Vatanka said. “And they’ve done it now, which sort of gives you an indication how dire the situation has become.”
Fars News Agency via AP 
In an apparent bid to quell the unrest, Iranian authorities have acknowledged the economic concerns and said peaceful protests are legitimate, but suggested that foreign powers — usually a reference to Israel and the U.S. — are behind subversive elements fueling violence on the streets.
Reacting to the latest remarks by the U.S. president, Ali Larijani, a former speaker of Iran’s parliament who’s now the secretary of the country’s National Security Council, said Friday in his own social media post that “Trump should know that intervention by the U.S. in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of the U.S. interests.”
“The people of the U.S. should know that Trump began the adventurism,” said Larijani.
“They should take care of their own soldiers,” he added, in what appeared to be a reference to the U.S. military forces based across the Middle East, who are in easy range of Iran’s vast stockpile of ballistic missiles.
There was a more sternly worded warning from Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said “any interventionist hand that gets too close to the security of Iran will be cut.”
“The people of Iran properly know the experience of ‘being rescued’ by Americans: from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza,” he said in a social media post.
Both the U.S. and Israeli governments had issued statements in support of the protests in Iran prior to Mr. Trump’s warning on Friday morning of a possible, unspecified U.S. intervention.
“The people of Iran want freedom. They have suffered at the hands of the Ayatollahs for too long,” Mike Waltz, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said in a post on X earlier this week. “We stand with Iranians in the streets of Tehran and across the country as they protest a radical regime that has brought them nothing but economic downturn and war.”
Vatanka told CBS News it’s not clear what steps the Trump administration might take to support the protesters or push back on a crackdown by the Iranian regime. But he believes Mr. Trump’s gestures of support could embolden the protesters.
“We shouldn’t underestimate the value of an American president who floats the idea of U.S. support for the protests,” he said. “It could just be the … one ingredient you need to keep this movement, the street-level movement alive, because in recent years, these protests have tended to sort of die down after a few days [or a] few weeks.”
Social Media/via REUTERS 
Tension between the U.S. and Iran escalated this week on the heels of a visit to the U.S. by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has campaigned his country’s close allies in Washington for decades to take a tougher stance on Iran.
After meeting with Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Sunday, Mr. Trump said he had heard that Iran could be attempting to rebuild its nuclear program following the unprecedented U.S. strikes on its enrichment facilities in June. Mr. Trump warned that if Iran did try to rebuild, “we’ll knock them down. We’ll knock the hell out of them. But hopefully that’s not happening.”
On Tuesday, Iranian President Mahsoud Pezeshkian said Tehran would respond “to any cruel aggression” with unspecified “harsh and discouraging” measures.
Iran is no stranger to nationwide protests, and the latest demonstrations have not come close to the last major outbreak in 2022, which was triggered by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian woman.
Her death in custody after being arrested for allegedly violating the nation’s strict dress code for women sparked a wave of anger across the nation. Several hundred people were killed, including dozens of members of the security forces, who waged a dramatic crackdown in response, arresting hundreds of people.
There were also widespread protests in 2019, sparked by a sharp increase in the price of petrol.
The standoff between Iran and the U.S. over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program reached a crescendo in June, when Mr. Trump ordered the deadly military strikes against Iran’s enrichment facilities, as Israel also carried out strikes on the country.
While Mr. Trump indicated earlier this week that the U.S. could take new action if Iran were to rebuild its nuclear program, Friday’s brief post on social media was the first suggestion of a possible American intervention on behalf of Iranian protesters.
