What to Know About Iran’s Protests—and Trump’s Threat of U.S. Intervention

Violent protests in Iran over the country’s weakening economy have now stretched beyond ten days, killing at least 36 people and intensifying pressure on the Islamic Republic as it confronts its most sustained unrest in three years.

Among the dead are four children and at least two members of Iran’s security forces, according to rights groups. Hundreds more have been detained as authorities move to suppress demonstrations that show little sign of fading.

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The protests have spread to more than 200 locations across 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces since last week, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported on Monday. HRANA has also documented more than 2,000 arrests so far, underscoring the scale of the state’s response. Iranian officials have not released their own comprehensive casualty or arrest figures.

Sanctions tied to Iran’s nuclear program—combined with the lingering economic damage of a 12-day war last summer with Israel and the United States, during which U.S. forces struck key Iranian nuclear sites—have battered the country’s economy. The rial has collapsed to roughly 1.4 million to the dollar, fueling inflation that has pushed basic goods out of reach for many Iranians. Long-standing corruption and mismanagement have only deepened the crisis.

President Donald Trump said last week that if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” adding: “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

Iranian officials have responded with increasingly blunt warnings. On Wednesday, Iran’s judiciary chief, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, said there would be “no leniency” for anyone he accused of aiding Iran’s enemies, explicitly framing the protests as part of a foreign-backed campaign. He accused Israel and the United States of using “hybrid methods” to destabilize the country, according to state media.

“The Islamic Republic considers the intensification of such rhetoric against the Iranian nation as a threat and will not leave its continuation without a response,” said Maj. Gen. Amir Hatami, Iran’s army chief, in remarks widely interpreted as a warning to Washington.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reinforced that message over the weekend, declaring that “rioters must be put in their place”—language that analysts say effectively gives security forces license to escalate repression.

“The economic situation in Iran has been bad and has continued to get worse,” says Naysan Rafati, senior Iran analyst for the International Crisis Group. The protests, he adds, reflect a “general, very deep malaise” that cuts across class and geography.

The scope of protests across Iran

The current wave of demonstrations began in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, where shopkeepers protested the rial’s free fall. But what started as economic anger has quickly taken on broader political meaning.

“Whatever the initial spark might be—so in this case, economic—the tinder of discontent is much bigger than that,” Rafati tells TIME. “So you very quickly get specific triggers for protest that lead to wider anti-regime, anti-system sentiment.” The scale, he argues, “is significant,” even if the numbers fluctuate day to day.

Footage circulating on social media has shown protests from Tehran to provincial cities and university campuses. In the capital, a sit-in at the Grand Bazaar earlier this week prompted security forces to deploy tear gas and temporarily shut the market.

Western provinces—including Ilam, Kermanshah, Lorestan, and Hamedan—have seen the deadliest clashes so far, according to Kurdish-Iranian rights group Hengaw, which says those regions account for a majority of fatalities. Iranian state-aligned outlets have reported vandalism and confrontations following funerals for slain protesters, a familiar flashpoint in past uprisings.

The Iranian government’s response

Iranian officials have attempted a mix of limited economic relief and force. The government recently announced a small monthly subsidy—about $7 per household—for food staples, a move that will reach more than 70 million people.

Mohammad Ja’far Ghaempanah, the president’s deputy for executive affairs, described the situation as a “full-fledged economic war” and called for what he termed “economic surgery.” 

But history suggests such measures are unlikely to calm unrest on their own.

“The system has so far stuck to what’s been its typical playbook,” Rafati says: modest concessions alongside overwhelming repression. “The government was able to quell all of those protests, but it was never able to really address the underlying grievances. Those grievances compound.”

Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, argues that the impact of sanctions and the limited ability to trade has effectively turned Iran into a “one customer country” where China gets the vast majority of its oil. “You’ve had a combination of a number of factors that have come together and created this explosive cocktail,” he says. 

Foreign investors have steered clear of Iranian markets, while Iranians themselves have taken money out of the country’s banks and purchased property elsewhere, creating a liquidity issue. Vatanka, who was born in Tehran, also attributes the economic conditions and failed Iranian response to the mismanagement of the theocracy, which he says “puts ideology and certain foreign policy priorities ahead of economic development.”

The role of the United States

Trump’s renewed warnings have added a volatile international dimension to the unrest. His comments came just days after U.S. forces captured Venezuela’s deposed president, Nicolas Maduro, following a months-long pressure campaign—an episode closely watched in Tehran.

Operation Midnight Hammer, the U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities last June, and Washington’s recent actions in Venezuela have given Trump’s threats new credibility, analysts say.

“If your go-to tool for quelling these protests is repression, and now you have the prospect of a potential U.S. intervention…then you’re dealing with both dissent from below, but also the possibility of action from abroad,” Rafati says. 

Whether Iran’s leadership can weather the current unrest remains uncertain. What is clear is that the protests have exposed deep fractures—and that the response from both Tehran and Washington could shape Iran’s trajectory for years to come.

“The Trump administration really is going after a regime change without calling it out,” he says. “And it’s playing a patient game, and is using all sorts of tools, including maximum pressure, which is mostly about economic sanctions, but occasionally it uses kinetic action.”