Washington, Jan 2 (.) US President Donald Trump on Friday warned that Washington was “locked and loaded” and would react with unprecedented aggression should Iranian authorities seek to use lethal force against protesters, as socio-political chaos continues to grip the country.
The warning came as protests in Iran stretched into a fifth consecutive day on Thursday, with at least seven demonstrators reported killed by security forces, according to local and opposition-linked sources. The unrest has spread rapidly, reaching new cities and towns and intensifying concerns over a widening crackdown.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said Washington would step in if peaceful demonstrators were violently killed. “If Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” he wrote. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
Demonstrations have reportedly gathered in droves in dozens of locations, including Tehran, Isfahan, Lorestan, Mazandaran, Khuzestan, Hamadan and Fars. Notably, protests also erupted in Qom, the Shia clerical bastion, and a key area in the Islamic Republic, where crowds openly called for the downfall of the ruling system.
Slogans heard across multiple cities have increasingly targeted the country’s leadership and supreme leader Ali Khamenei, marking a shift from economic grievances to direct political defiance.
Pro-monarchy chants, including calls linked to Iran’s pre-Islamic revolutionary past, have dominated several rallies, underscoring the deep public resentment in the country, which extends way past just economic needs.
The US State Department said the protests were emblematic of the deeply entrenched public anger at the government, amid decades of socio-political repression, economic mismanagement, and increasing role of religion in the state.
In a written statement on Thursday, a department spokesperson described the unrest as an expression of the Iranian people’s “understandable anger”.
“The protests reflect the understandable anger of the Iranian people at their government’s failures and excuses,” the spokesperson said.
The statement further accused Tehran of neglecting the economy, agriculture, water and electricity for decades while “squandering billions on terrorist proxies and nuclear weapons research”, and cited Iran’s involvement in acts of “terrorism against the United States and its allies”.
Iranian authorities have not released comprehensive casualty figures, severely restricting access to information.
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