Iran on edge as Trump threatens action following Venezuela operation amid protests

BEIRUT — Nabbing Nicolás Maduro — a Hollywood-esque operation in President Trump’s telling that saw Delta Force spirit the Venezuelan leader out of Venezuela — shocked U.S. friends and foes alike, with governments from Colombia to China to France sputtering condemnations.

Yet perhaps no nation is as alarmed as Iran. Its leaders, facing a fresh bout of antigovernment demonstrations and still struggling to move past U.S. and Israeli attacks last summer, now contend with being in the crosshairs of an administration seemingly unafraid of upending the international order.

Recent statements from Trump and his supporters have done little to dispel Tehran’s fears. A day before the Maduro operation, Trump warned the Iranian government the U.S. was “locked and loaded and ready to go” if it “shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters.”

He repeated the threat on Monday, telling reporters on Air Force One that “I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States” if government personnel killed protesters.

Other U.S. officials more explicitly drew the connection between Maduro’s removal and Iran.

“By now, the bad guys should believe that when President Trump says something, he means it. In my view, the ayatollah and his henchmen are at the top of the list of the bad guys,” wrote Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on X on Tuesday. The ardent Trump supporter has long advocated for action against Iran.

On Wednesday, he wrote, “President Trump has put the ayatollah and his henchmen on notice for their brutal oppression of the Iranian people.

“One thing is clear: the Iranian regime continues this brutality at its own peril.”

The protests, sparked by a catastrophic crash of Iran’s currency in late December, have spread to all but four of Iran’s 31 provinces, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, including in places where government loyalists traditionally dominate. At least 36 people have been killed, including 30 protesters, four children and two security personnel.

But unlike previous rounds of unrest, when the government could ignore international opprobrium to subdue protests with massive force, demonstrators now appear to have an emboldened U.S. president on their side.

“Before, if a U.S. president said, ‘We’re going to come in and protect protesters,’ everyone in the Iranian government would have called his bluff and said it won’t happen,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“But there was the 12-day war in June [between Israel and Iran, with U.S. involvement]. You just had Venezuela. And you have a cowboy president. This is uncharted territory for the regime. They have to take this seriously,” she said.

There are already signs that they are. On Wednesday, Iran’s army chief, Maj. Gen. Amir Hatami, warned of a possible preemptive military strike. In an address carried by the state-run IRNA news agency, Hatami said that “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.”

“I can say with confidence that today the readiness of Iran’s armed forces is far greater than before the war,” he said, vowing to “cut off the hand of any aggressor.”

That echoed a similarly belligerent statement Tuesday from the country’s Defense Council, which said Iran could preemptively act against enemies if it saw “objective signs of threat” and that “Iran’s security, independence and territorial integrity are “an inviolable red line.”

The Defense Council added that “the intensification of threatening and interventionist rhetoric… could be understood as hostile conduct” and would trigger a “proportionate, firm, and decisive response.”

A young Iranian woman walks under an anti-U.S. and Israeli billboard in Tehran depicting symbolic images of coffins of U.S. and Israeli soldiers, alongside a statement from the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, that reads, ‘’Watch out your soldiers.”

(Morteza Nikoubazl / NurPhoto / Getty Images)

Yet at home, the Iranian government has hewed to a relatively conciliatory tone concerning the recent protests, with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying on Saturday that issues raised in the demonstrations were “valid” but that “mercenary individuals provoked by the enemy” were chanting antigovernment slogans.

And though he threatened “rioters must be put in their place,” observers say the government has yet to deploy its full might against protesters — a reluctance possibly due to fear of what Trump might do.

“The regime has long resorted to the iron fist in quelling past rounds of nationwide unrest. But reprising that playbook more than it already has to quell discontent now runs the possibility of some form of intervention from abroad — and Tehran’s decision-makers are likely at a loss to know what covert or overt options may be on the table, and how targeted or sweeping they could be,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at the International Crisis Group think tank.

“For all the confidence the regime will exude in its ability to address threats to its stability at home and threats to its security from abroad, it must surely be concerned about its ability to handle either,” Vaez said.

He added that for Trump, who has “the wind in his sails after the operations in Caracas, the allure of further interventions with low costs and high reward may loom large.”

The compounding crises come at a difficult time for Tehran. Over the last two years, it has watched the systematic dismantling of its so-called Axis of Resistance, a constellation of armed factions and governments it could rely on to confront the U.S. and Israel.

A view from a market in Tehran on Wednesday as people shop amid soaring prices and a rapidly devaluing currency during the country’s worst economic crisis since 1979.

(Fatemeh Bahrami / Anadolu / Getty Images)

Israel’s bruising attacks, which wiped out the upper echelons of Iran’s military leadership, revealed deep intelligence failures, even as U.S. strikes smashed Tehran’s nuclear program. Sanctions, corruption and mismanagement have left the oil-rich nation facing endemic water and electricity shortages. Meanwhile, losing access to Venezuela, Iran’s top partner in the Western Hemisphere and an essential ally in sanctions busting, will only further Tehran’s isolation.

Still, there is little likelihood a decapitation strike, possibly targeting Khamenei, would bring about regime change, or even a change of behavior.

Experts say the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is tasked with defending the government, remains the most organized force in the country and could take on any opposition movement. Cohesion is still strong among the various security branches. And the 12-day war with Israel spurred the government to have deputies in place across its various command chains.

Meanwhile, Iran’s leaders say they have no intent to negotiate.

“Those who argued that the solution to the country’s problems was in negotiating with the U.S. have seen what happened. In the midst of Iran negotiating with the U.S., the U.S. government was busy behind the scenes preparing plans for war,” Khamenei wrote on X on Saturday. “We will not give in to the enemy.”

But while a preemptive attack by Iran could trigger a momentary, rally-around-the-flag reprieve for the government domestically, such a confrontation would likely bring about the sort of military action Tehran wants to avoid.

“It’s a game in which Iran will not be a winner,” Geranmayeh said. “But desperate situations force desperate choices, and all of them are high cost.”