President Donald Trump fired off a 3 a.m. social media post threatening to attack Iran after protests against the country’s supreme leader turned deadly.
“If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” the president wrote on Truth Social at 3 a.m. Washington time.
The post came about an hour after Fox News reported that six people had been killed Thursday during anti-government demonstrations in Iran, where protesters have called for an end to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s 36-year rule.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
The protests began Sunday in Tehran among shopkeepers angered by a sharp fall in the value of the Iranian currency, and on Tuesday, students from at least 10 universities joined the demonstrations, which spread to several more cities, Al Jazeera reported.
The demonstrations are the most widespread since 2022, when an uprising broke out after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody after being accused by the morality police of not wearing her veil properly.
But so far, the economic protests have not been on the same scale, according to the BBC.
Street protests in Iran 🇮🇷 are getting serious, triggered by collapse of the currency and inflation, but also with political slogans in the traditionally important bazaar of Teheran. pic.twitter.com/eWY0yWMHwP
— Carl Bildt (@carlbildt) January 2, 2026
In June, Trump declared that his administration had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities in a series of targeted strikes, although the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog estimated the attacks only halted Iran’s ability to enrich uranium for a period of months, not years.
Iran has said its nuclear program is purely for peaceful, civilian purposes, but it was enriching uranium at levels far above those required for domestic power generation. Still, investigators have not found evidence that the country was on the verge of creating a nuclear bomb when Trump authorized the June strikes.
Since then, the administration has tried and failed to reach an agreement with Iran to govern its nuclear program.
On Tuesday, the president told reporters during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he had received word Iran was trying to rebuild its nuclear program.
“If they are, we’re going to have to knock them down,” he said, according to ABC News. “We’ll knock the hell out of them.”
The president campaigned on a promise to end foreign wars—not start them—and his team refers to him as the “peacemaker in chief” based on the dubious claim that he has ended or prevented eight wars and counting, including the ceasefire in Gaza.
At the same time, he has bombed Iran and Venezuela, authorized deadly strikes on small vessels in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, and claims to have killed Islamic terrorists in Nigeria.
During his meeting with Netanyahu, he was caught on a hot mic complaining that he had deserved to win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, which he lobbied for all throughout 2025.
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