ISTANBUL — Reeling from a crackdown on protesters in Iran that left thousands dead, Iranians are now grappling with feelings of betrayal, confusion and uncertainty after President Donald Trump repeatedly promised to intervene on their behalf and then declined to do so.
Some Iranians said in interviews that Trump’s words of support had added to their determination to resist the Iranian government after protests erupted initially over dire economic conditions and then took on widespread demands for ousting the entire ruling system.
Hadis, 36, a Tehran resident, said in an interview that Iranians turned out to protest, despite widespread killings by security forces, with expectations that Trump would order a military strike on Iranian targets. “Our eyes were fixed on the sky, like something will happen. He’ll hit now,” Hadis said. “We came out [to protest] with fear, but we had hope that Trump will strike now, will kill these guys.”
After Trump refrained from launching an attack, she concluded that he did not have Iranians’ interests in mind. “Trump isn’t thinking of humanity. … You could easily do something for us.” Like others interviewed, she spoke on the condition that her full name not be used for fear of reprisal by the Iranian government.
Aanahita, 45, an Iranian woman in Istanbul, described staying awake all through a recent night amid wide speculation that the United States was about to strike Iran. While an Iranian government shutdown of the internet has it made difficult to communicate with people inside the country, other Iranians in Turkey, Armenia and Dubai described a similar sense of anticipation.
“I kept thinking about how helpless we are that we have to pray for another country to attack us for our salvation and freedom,” Aanahita said. “But today, more than anything, anger is surging through me. I feel like Trump has backtracked again and traded the lives of Iran’s youth.”
A week after protests got underway in Iran in late December, Trump promised on Truth Social that if Iran were to kill peaceful protesters, the U.S. would “come to their rescue.” He followed that a few days later with a vow that “if they start killing people like they have in the past, we will get involved. We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts.”
In another post, Trump promised that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” encouraging Iranians to “TAKE OVER” regime institutions.
Human rights groups that monitor Iran believe recent government killings far exceed those during previous rounds of protest. Amnesty International said “mass unlawful killings committed on an unprecedented scale” have taken place, according to information it has received, while the Human Rights Activists News Agency reports that as of Sunday more than 3,500 protesters have been killed.
Videos verified by The Washington Post show security forces firing directly into crowds of protesters in at least six cities across Iran.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Trump said late last week that Iranian authorities had canceled plans to execute 800 protesters. The Post has reported that Trump had received word through a senior U.S. envoy that Iran had canceled the executions and that this development, along with pressure from regional allies, limits on U.S. military resources and concerns over unpredictable fallout, had led him to refrain from ordering strikes last week.
In response to Trump’s comments about the executions, Tehran prosecutor Ali Salehi told Iranian state television on Saturday that “Trump always talks a lot of nonsense” and that a large number of indictments had been issued. “Our response is firm, deterrent and swift,” Salehi said.
Exiled Iranian crown prince Reza Pahlavi, who has emerged as the most prominent opposition leader amid this round of unrest, has called on Trump “to intervene to help the people of Iran.” In a statement Saturday provided by his office, Pahlavi said that it “is not for me to tell President Trump what to do. But what I can say is the Iranian people would welcome targeted action against security forces killing them. In the end the change will come from the Iranian people. They are the boots on the ground. But they do now need some targeted help to stop the massacres.”
Yazdan Shohadaei, spokesman for the Iran Transition Council, an opposition coalition, said it had been irresponsible for Trump to promise action and then to not intervene. “The people of Iran thought to themselves that this time, the world will be with us, and we saw that it wasn’t,” he said.
Shohadaei, based in Germany, had signed an open letter to Trump this month calling on him to “act against the machinery of repression and prevent the continued killing of a people who seek dignity, justice, and freedom.”
But Nazenin Ansari, editor of a Persian-language newspaper in London and another signatory of the open letter, said she doesn’t view Trump’s inaction thus far as a betrayal, and she left open the possibility that it was a bluff. “We haven’t reached the end of this Iran story,” she said.
Some Iranians hold out hope that Trump could yet decide to intervene. They suggest his comments could be misdirection, noting that Israel, later joined by the U.S., carried out a military assault in June at a time when U.S. officials had been talking about engaging in a new round of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.
Two officials told The Post that Trump and his advisers are now keeping their options open and possibly buying time while the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier is in transit from Asia to the Middle East. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said in a statement that “nobody knows what President Trump will do with respect to Iran besides the President himself.”
Some foreign officials said Trump owes support to the Iranian protesters.
“By encouraging the population and explicitly offering help — by announcing that help is on the way — the American president has assumed a responsibility that cannot later be denied,” said Norbert Röttgen, deputy member of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee. “I have greatly applauded the president for his words and his engagement. But I also believe it must be said clearly that he has now assumed a responsibility to stand by his words and to follow through on what he has promised — to deliver on those promises.”
A second European official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the U.S. president, said that many Iranians “trusted — and still trust — that he would not abandon them and would help bring about an overthrow. If he now makes a complete reversal, then Trump will have to live with the fact that he will go down in history as the one who encouraged Iranian civilians to demonstrate and promised help, only to abandon them afterward.”
While Trump’s remarks may have fueled the protest, Ali Fathollah-Nejad, director of the Center for Middle East and Global Order in Berlin, said it is difficult to tell how they influenced the regime or affected its violent response one way or the other. “I don’t think that this was the primary factor behind that scale of state-sponsored violence,” he said.
Inside the country, some Iranians say they now feel defeated. In some accounts shared online, Iranians described being traumatized and in deep mourning.
One woman in Tehran, speaking in a voice message provided to The Post by an intermediary, said last week that life has been drained from her usually vibrant city. Only stores that sell essential goods were open, and virtually no one ventures outside in the evenings, she said.
“People are extremely sad and tired,” she said. “There is no life.”
Mekhennet reported from Washington.
The post Trump promised Iranians the U.S. would rescue them. Some feel betrayed. appeared first on Washington Post.
