THE GUARDIAN: Foreign minister says Iranian military is on standby after US president said he would act if demonstrators were killed
Donald Trump has threatened to intervene in Iran if its government kills demonstrators, prompting warnings from senior Iranian officials that any American interference would cross a “red line”.
In a social media post on Friday, Trump said that if Iran were to shoot and kill protesters, the US would “come to their rescue”. He added: “We are locked and loaded, and ready to go,” without explaining what that might mean in practice.
Protests in Iran are in their sixth day, and are the largest since 2022, when the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini triggered demonstrations across the country. The current unrest was triggered by an unprecedented decline in the value of the national currency on Sunday. The Iranian rial dropped to about 1.4m to the US dollar, further harming an already beleaguered economy.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, called Trump’s statement “reckless and dangerous”, and said the country’s military was on standby. He also said the protests had been mostly peaceful, but that attacks on public property would not be tolerated.
“Given President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard within US borders, he of all people should know that criminal attacks on public property cannot be tolerated,” he said. » | William Christou | Friday, January 2, 2026
