“Locked & Loaded”: Trump Says US Will Intervene If Iran Kills Protesters

President Trump has just become the first sitting US President to explicitly warn that the United States stands ready to directly intervene in Iran if Tehran authorities begin killing peaceful protesters, as he wrote Friday that Washington ”will come to their rescue”.

In a brief early morning post on Truth Social, he wrote: “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.” He gave no further details what course of action this might take, but it’s a pretty clear and provocative message to Iranian leadership – or comes very close to saying something akin to the ‘Ayatollah must go’.

Trump’s full message is as follows: “If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.”

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did respond in very short fashion, with a senior aide from his office saying Trump should “be careful” if he intervened, warning of unleashing more chaos in the region.

“Trump should know that US interference in this internal matter would mean destabilizing the entire region and destroying America’s interests,” Khamenei adviser Ali Larijani stated.

The economic protests which have been raging since Sunday, and have spread from the marketplaces to the universities, have turned deadly. International monitors and media have said six have been killed.

However, Iranian officials are saying at least one of these deaths and many among the injured are security forces. The slain officer was said to be a member of the Basij – a paramilitary force linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). In several locales Basij members have been observed supporting local police forces, as is typical whenever major anti-government protests flare up.

| Unprecedented: Iranians from cities where riots took place last night, have come in protest AGAINST the rioters

Iranians from Hamedan, Kavar, and other cities have come en masse to denounce and condemn the behaviour of rioters.

They condemn vandalism, destruction of… pic.twitter.com/AYAAbDhohv

— Arya – آریا (@AryJeay) January 2, 2026

Newsweek reviews of the violence so far in the country of over 90 million people:

• Deaths were reported in Lordegan, Kuhdasht, and Isfahan, though casualty figures vary between state media and rights groups.
• The Revolutionary Guards said one member of its Basij paramilitary unit was killed in Kuhdasht, with 13 others wounded.
• Rights group Hengaw identified the man as a protester, contradicting official claims.
• Demonstrations spread to Marvdasht in Fars province, while arrests were reported in Kermanshah, Khuzestan, and Hamedan.

Most of the protest deaths have come in the West of the country, and mounting casualties from the unrest has been confirmed in Iranian state media – though few details have been given in some instances on whether these are police or protesters.

The initial response from leadership in Tehran:

With the statements by Israeli officials and @realDonaldTrump, what has been going on behind the scenes is now clear. We distinguish between the stance of the protesting shopkeepers and the actions of disruptive actors, and Trump should know that U.S. interference in this… pic.twitter.com/uu9R20KFFv

— Ali Larijani | علی لاریجانی (@alilarijani_ir) January 2, 2026

Trump in openly siding with the protests may have just done one of two things: either he has just supercharged the protests and will given people in the streets motivation to provoke security forces even more – after some government buildings have already been broken into, or else his words serve to quash the protests fairly quickly.

After all, Iranian authorities have already warned against outside interference and meddling, at a moment they are eager to brand rioting youth in the streets as Israeli or American agents. But now they can be branded by officials as doing to bidding of Washington and of President Trump. The people in the streets are unlikely to want to be branded as in America’s corner, given it’s been the US all along decimating their economy through years of brutal sanctions.

Signs of pro-government and nationalistic ‘counter-protests’ have emerged:

Huge crowds are marching toward the resting place of General Soleimani in Kerman to mark the sixth anniversary of his martyrdom.

Follow: https://t.co/mLGcUTSA3Q pic.twitter.com/Y6hFmpdqZC

— Press TV (@PressTV) January 2, 2026

It should also been questioned whether the United States actually cares about the ‘Iranian people’. Did Washington actually care about Syrians while fueling a decade-long plus proxy war by arming the hardline jihadi anti-Assad insurgency? Definitely not.

Iran’s military responds:

Iran’s Defence Minister dismissed Trump’s remarks, saying Tehran would retaliate decisively against any attack and insisting its military strength has grown since the last 12-day conflict.

“If any threat targets our country, we will respond with full force. Without hesitation,”… pic.twitter.com/12SeqoWQSe

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) January 2, 2026

Also, Speaker of Iran’s Parliament Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf has said that “all American centers and forces across the entire region would be legitimate targets” in response to any potential US “adventurism.”

Trump’s new words just added heavy fuel to the fire, and this portends possibly the same Syria playbook applied to Iran.