President Donald Trump and senior Iranian officials reportedly traded direct threats as economic protests broadened inside Iran, sharpening US–Iran tensions months after Washington launched strikes on Iranian nuclear sites in June.
Trump posted on Truth Social that if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the US “will come to their rescue,” adding, “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
Iranian officials responded with warnings framed around US regional exposure. Ali Larijani, described as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a former parliament speaker, alleged the US and Israel were stoking the demonstrations and warned US intervention would mean “chaos in the entire region” and the “destruction of the US interests.”
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“The people of the US should know that Trump began the adventurism. They should take care of their own soldiers,” Larijani wrote on X.
Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a former long-time council secretary, warned that “any interventionist hand that gets too close to the security of Iran will be cut,” and said Iranians know the cost of American “rescues”, citing troop pullouts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gaza.
The protests are in their sixth day. Iran’s rial has rapidly depreciated, with $1 costing around 1.4 million rials, according to the report.
At least seven people have been reported killed in violence surrounding the demonstrations, according to the same report, as chants have expanded from economic grievances into explicit anti-theocracy lines.
The demonstrations were described as the biggest since 2022, when Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody sparked nationwide protests.
Iran’s civilian government under reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has tried to signal openness to negotiating with protesters, while Pezeshkian has also acknowledged limited room to act against the currency slide driving the unrest.
Iranian officials’ warnings referenced US regional footprint after the June sequence that included US strikes on three nuclear sites during Israel’s 12-day war with Iran and Iran’s retaliatory attack on Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
Iran has also said it is no longer enriching uranium at any site, in a signal it remains open to negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions, though the report said talks have not occurred as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned Tehran against reconstituting its program.
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