Widespread protests have rocked Iran for nearly a week and led to increasing violent clashes with security forces, prompting President Donald Trump to threaten intervention if a crackdown continues.
The protests, which started with economic grievances by shopkeepers in Tehran and quickly spread to remote cities in provinces like Fars and Lorestan, where protesters chanted slogans against the ruling clerics, have raised pointed questions for the country’s leaders about how much support they really enjoy.
Ali Larijani, who serves as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, alleged Friday without providing evidence that Israel and the U.S. were stoking the escalating demonstrations. And Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said in a post on X that Trump’s threat of intervention makes U.S. bases in the region “legitimate targets.”
In a post on Truth Social, Trump had said that if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.” He did not specify what this would mean.
Iranian officials attempted to project a united front with ordinary citizens in June, when the Israeli military battered the country in a 12-day war, partly joined by the U.S. military. The war killed more than 1,000 people including top military leaders and nuclear scientists, according to state media, and wreaked havoc on its nuclear facilities.
On Monday, after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump issued a fresh threat to “knock the hell out of” Iran if the Islamic Republic attempts to rebuild its nuclear program or expand its ballistic missile program.
Saturday’s capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, who enjoyed a warm relationship with Tehran, has also incensed Iran’s political elites, who have decried the U.S. operation as “a clear example of state terrorism.” But as tensions with the U.S. escalate once again, Iran appears far from having the unity projected last year.
“Iranians were facing bombardment by external powers and so they had no choice but to stick together. And I think that we should take that for what it was. Did [Iranians] coming together mean that they suddenly abandoned all of their contentious feelings towards the regime or its leadership? Absolutely not. They’re not mutually exclusive feelings,” Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, told NBC News in a telephone interview.
“And I think that Iranians still feel quite united amidst the many challenges that they face, challenges from abroad, challenges from their governance system and their leadership that isn’t willing to reform or change,” Vakil said,
Even before the joint Israeli and U.S. attack in June, Iran’s economy was in a tailspin, battered by sanctions, rising inflation and the devaluation of the Iranian currency against the U.S. dollar, which led to families struggling hard to make ends meet as the value of their savings plunged, analysts say.
The country’s problems were compounded by a water and energy crisis last year that led to dry taps and electricity blackouts.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has attempted to at least partly shoulder the blame for the country’s woes and even suggested on Monday that the interior minister should meet with leaders among the protesters to address their concerns and try to solve their problems.
“If the people are dissatisfied, we and you are to blame. Don’t look for America or someone else to blame,” Pezeshkian said on Thursday while visiting officials in the province of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari in central Iran, according to state media. “We need to serve properly so the people are satisfied with us.”
The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, a Norwegian-registered Kurdish watchdog that monitors rights violations across Iran, reported on Thursday that two protesters were killed by security forces in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, perhaps highlighting the limits of Pezeshkian’s powers in dealing with the protests.
“He is trying to limit, I think, the nature of the anger. He’s trying to say it’s all because of the currency collapse, because of inflation,” Abbas Milani, the director of the Iranian studies program at Stanford University, told NBC News in a telephone interview.
“I don’t think that people see it that way. I think the people see the currency collapse and the inflation as the consequence of the regime’s inherent corruption and incapacity,” Milani said. “They want the regime changed.”
Hengaw reported the death of 10 people during six days of protests, including one man who was killed by security forces on Friday in Kermanshah province in northwest Iran.
It remains to be seen whether Trump’s threats of intervention will encourage the protesters or lead security forces to hold their fire.
“People could feel slightly more confident and emboldened thinking that the United States might actually be more than rhetorically supportive,” said Vakil of Chatham House. “But I worry that they might be disappointed, not understanding that the United States is very much focused on outcomes and interests that benefit the United States and not really benevolent towards the Iranian people.”
Still, whether the protests expand and continue or are crushed by force like similar protests in 2022 and 2023 — when approximately 500 people were killed and thousands were arrested — will largely depend on the will of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest authority in the Islamic Republic, analysts say. He has not spoken publicly about the protests in the past week.
“They will have a scorched-earth policy,” Milani from Stanford said.
