Protests across Iran have led to US President Donald Trump exchanging threats with top officials of the country, with both experts and representatives saying US intervention could spark “chaos” in the neighbouring region.
The demonstrations, Iran’s largest in three years, were triggered by the country’s ailing economy and have reportedly led to the deaths of at least seven people.
Trump said on Friday that if Iran shoots and kills protesters, the US will come to their rescue.
“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” he said in a Truth Social post.
Iranian officials have warned the US against becoming involved, with its strikes on the country’s three nuclear sites during Israel’s 12-day war on the Islamic Republic last year still fresh in their minds.
What sparked the protests in Iran?
Shopkeepers in Iran began demonstrating on Sunday over the government’s handling of a sharp currency slide and rapidly rising prices, which has since escalated to clashes between protesters and Iranian security forces.
Iran’s economy has struggled for years since the US reimposed sanctions in 2018 after Trump withdrew from an international nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), during his first term in office.
Iwan Morgan, an emeritus professor at University College London, told The i Paper that: “The Iranian economy has been suffering huge problems because of the economic sanctions that the US has levied on it. We’re talking about very high inflation, not the stuff we see in the West.”
He said this has made life difficult in Iran “and there’s no doubt this has been a factor in the protests”.
The recent reported deaths, two on Wednesday and five on Thursday, occurred in four cities, largely home to Iran’s Lur ethnic group.
Ali Larijani warned Trump against becoming involved in Iranian affairs (Photo: Alex Brandon, Bilal Hussein/AP Photo)Ali Larijani, a former parliament speaker who serves as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, claimed on X that Israel and the US were stoking the demonstrations.
“Trump should know that intervention by the US in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of the US interests,” Larijani wrote.
He offered no evidence to support the allegation, which Iranian officials have also made during past protests in the country.
“The people of the US should know that Trump began the adventurism. They should take care of their own soldiers,” Larijani added.
Why is Trump becoming involved?
While the protests are seemingly rooted in economic issues, they may mark the start of a heavier-handed response by Iran’s theocracy. Demonstrations have slowed in Tehran, the capital, but have expanded elsewhere in the country.
Morgan said that, when it comes to Iranian protests, “there’s always an economic dimension and a democratic dimension, but the two together are driving this”.
Jack Clayton, who published a PhD last year on US foreign policy in the Middle East with SOAS University, said there were various reasons for Trump’s continued hostility to Iran.
“The Iranian regime since 1979 refused to recognise the legitimacy of Israel, a close ally for Trump. As a result, we have seen hostilities between the US and Iran since Trump came back in, exemplified by the strikes on nuclear facilities last year,” he told The i Paper.
“Trump may well want to see a change of regime in Iran to see a more friendly type of one emerge towards the US and regional allies in the Middle East and Gulf states,” Clayton added.
The Iranian currency, the Rial, has fallen in value this year, putting pressure on consumers (Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA via Reuters)Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and who was previously Iran’s Supreme National Security Council secretary, warned on Friday that “any interventionist hand that gets too close to the security of Iran will be cut.”
“The people of Iran properly know the experience of ‘being rescued’ by Americans: from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza,” he wrote on X.
Morgan said Iran has been a “sore point” for Trump ever since the JCPOA was brokered by Barack Obama.
But he added that Trump’s escalated involvement in foreign conflicts of late could be seen as an attempt to shifting the US public’s attention from home issues, such as the Epstein files.
Trump’s intervention options
Morgan said that while Trump has expressed his willingness to intervene, attacking Iran represented an “infinitely” dangerous threat to Middle East security.
He also cited the possibility of collateral damage from missile strikes in the region, or from growing unrest in Iran.
Trump “should understand that the regional destabilisation of a big civil war in Iran would be huge”, Morgan said. “There would be chaos in southwest Asia, which is already a regional hotspot for trouble.”
A graphic showing the Iranian nuclear sites targeted by the US in June last year (Photo: Yilmaz Yucel / Anadolu via Getty Images)Could the UK get involved?
Sweeping UN economic sanctions were reimposed on Iran in September 2025, when the UK, alongside France and Germany, accused the country of failing to co-operate with the JCPOA deal, a move described by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at the time as “unfair, unjust and illegal”.
Even so, Clayton said he felt it was unlikely the UK would intervene in the current protests.
“Under Labour, there will likely be more pressure from the left of the party to not act militarily, especially in the Middle East due to the legacy of the Iraq War, even if it was a much smaller-scale operation proposed,” he said.
Clayton added: “We have, of course, seen Labour MPs support the recent protests, but there will be those that may want to rebuild diplomacy on the nuclear issue especially.”
The possibility of an Iranian revolution
The current protests have become the largest in Iran since 2022, when the death of a young woman in police custody, who was detained for not wearing a hijab, triggered nationwide demonstrations.
Morgan said the Iranian regime had “lost the hearts and minds” of a significant portion of the country’s population since it came to power in 1979.
He said: “People are putting their lives on the line. Freedom is a powerful driver of discontent. [But] we’ve been here before with the Arab Spring and that didn’t get very far.”
Morgan also said that the Iranian regime was well-equipped with means to deter protests. Over 1,500 people were executed in the country in 2025, the most seen in decades.
“They have instruments of repression in the form of the Revolutionary Guard and the support of the army as well. It has the absolute will to crush any internal threat with the police,” he said.
Your next read
square US POLITICS AnalysisWhy President Vance would be more dangerous than Trump
square WORLD InterviewI was CIA’s top agent in Moscow – Putin has trained to manipulate men like Trump
square DONALD TRUMPTrump says high doses of aspirin to blame for bruises
square RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR DispatchUkraine’s resources are at breaking point and a car park in Lviv shows us why
Yet, despite the country’s power over its people, Morgan said such acts of protests were a credible path to turning the tide on a regime. “These things are hugely important, the drip, drip effect is bound to be significant.”
Clayton said that while it was understandable that Iranians were protesting, if things escalated further, leading to regime change, the future is very unclear.
“What comes next after a regime is always the difficult question,” he said. “The Iranian protestors are certainly standing up legitimately against a brutal regime but that’s not to say they know themselves what may come next.”
Hence then, the article about what s really going on in iran and how trump is trying to speed up unrest was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( What’s really going on in Iran – and how Trump is trying to speed up unrest )
Also on site :
- Skanska signs additional contract with existing client to build a data center in USA for USD 228M, about SEK 2.2 billion
- ‘No way out’: Telangana student dies in Germany after jumping from burning apartment on New Year’s Eve
- Switzerland fire latest: King Charles ‘heartbroken’ after 40 killed in ‘horrific’ Crans Montana bar disaster