It has been nearly two weeks since US President Donald J. Trump threatened the Iranian regime with military intervention for killing its demonstrating citizens.
"If Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue," the president wrote in a post on Truth Social on January 2, about five days into the Iranian protests. "We are locked and loaded and ready to go."
Since then, according to Iran International, the regime has killed "at least 12,000," and according to CBS News, "possibly as many as 20,000 people." According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), as of January 14, "[at] 617 protest gatherings in 187 cities across the country, the arrest of at least 18,470 people [was reported]."
On January 13, Trump wrote:
"Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP,"
Despite encouraging Iran's protesters to carry on and assuring them that American "help is on its way," Trump has done nothing to compel the regime to permanently stop the killing or its other atrocities.
On January 15, according to some news reports, Trump informed Tehran that the US would not attack the regime. The report came after Trump said the day before that he had been informed that Iran's crackdown on nationwide protests was subsiding:
"The killing has stopped. The executions have stopped. There's no plan for executions or an execution. I've been told that on good authority. We'll find out about it. I'm sure if it happens, I'll be very upset."
Iran executes its people year-round, even when there are no protests. In 2025, the regime executed at least 1,922 people, more than double the number recorded the previous year and the highest figure documented in over a decade, according to a report by HRANA.
One cannot take any information that comes from the mullah regime as being "on good authority," especially since the Iranian regime will say anything to stay in power and avoid a US attack.
According to a January 15 report in the New York Post:
"The ruthless slaughter of anti-government protesters in Iran appears to have stopped — but only because residents are being held hostage in their homes by machine gun-wielding security forces that have flooded the streets, sources told The Post Thursday."
Iran is also trying to deny that it had scheduled any executions, although White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt stated that Iran had scheduled 800. At least one, according to reports, has been "postponed." Oh? Until when?
The question becomes: Is Trump actually going to leave these psychopaths in power and effectively thwart the brave, unarmed Iranians from ridding themselves of an armed government that has been suppressing, torturing and slaughtering them in the streets over the past 47 years?
For reasons that are entirely unclear, Trump already has a history, unfortunately, of rescuing the Iranian regime -- called by the US State Department 39 years in a row, since 1984 the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.
When Israel and the US critically set back the Iranian regime during the 12-day war, Trump stepped in and imposed a ceasefire, thereby preventing Israel from continuing to neutralize threats from Iran's drones, ballistic missiles and other weaponry. Trump even stopped Israel from responding to an Iranian violation of the ceasefire after it went into effect. In doing so, he not only disadvantaged Israel but also subverted the Iranian people, who, after an Israeli airstrike destroyed the gates of the notorious Evin Prison, which represents every evil that the Iranian regime stands for, were hoping for an end to the regime.
Trump first said he did not want regime change in Iran; then posted that he might want regime change if it could "Make Iran Great Again: MIGA!!!", before turning around, yet again, and reimposing the ceasefire.
Trump also seems constantly to be "forgetting" that Iran has been attacking the US since 1979, starting with taking 66 members of the US Embassy staff hostage in 1979, then, in 1983, bombing the US Marines barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 Americans. In just the last four years, Iran has launched 350 attacks on American troops and assets in the Middle East, without America lifting a finger in protest.
If Trump does not care about the lives of Iranian protesters, or that he might inadvertently be condemning them to live under savage rulers they do not want, he does claim to care about US national security -- as he repeatedly mentions when it comes to "running" Venezuela and acquiring Greenland. Threatening military intervention against Iran for two weeks, however, and then doing nothing is probably an extremely counterproductive, horrible precedent to set for US national security deterrence.
Every US adversary -- from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Chinese President Xi Jinping -- can now assume that the Trump administration, while giving diplomacy so much of a chance that it is effectively no help at all, is primarily just huffing and puffing, while every US ally can now assume that the US no longer can be trusted.
The Trump administration's dawdling appears virtually the same as that of President Joe Biden: through passivity, he succeeded only in encouraging America's adversaries to drag out their aggression -- because nobody stopped them. Such acoustics with no follow-up destroy US deterrence and paint the Trump administration as weak and dithering at a time when the future of American preeminence is at stake. That is a terrible look.
Robert Williams is based in the United States.
