Peloni: This is true thus far. Still, it need not continue to be so. The sacrifices made by the Iranian people should be seen to support US interests in seeking a new regime in Iran and following thru on US overpromises and thereby rectifying US underperformance thus far.
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Trump. Gage Skidmore via Flickr, Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0. Wikipedia
President Donald Trump made a promise to support the Iranian protesters, and then did nothing as more than 36,500 of them were murdered by the regime. Now he has three possibilities: to continue to do nothing, to launch a brief attack on Iran to show that he had “done as promised,” or to launch a massive attack that could possibly lead to regime change, but also risks a furious response by the Iranian rulers, on American bases and allies in the region, including Israel, as they would no longer feel they had anything more to lose.
More on the current state of play between Washington and Tehran can be found here: “Trump has backed himself into a corner,” Andrew Fox, February 2, 2026:
Iran’s massive protests presented the greatest challenge to the Islamic Republic in decades. Donald Trump publicly encouraged Iranians to rise up, declaring on social media: “Iranian Patriots, keep protesting – take over your institutions!!! … help is on its way.” Many protesters took these words seriously. For the first time in their lives, a US president had promised support, giving them hope that Washington would intervene if the regime used force.
Tragically, that help never materialised.
As the regime launched a brutal crackdown, shutting off the internet while gunning down crowds, demonstrators waited in vain for American aid. The result was a bloodbath: thousands of Iranians were slaughtered in the streets, with some estimates as high as 30,000+ killed in just a few weeks. The protest movement was drowned in blood, and the revolutionary moment seems to have passed, for now, leaving Iran’s cities eerily quiet under the heavy hand of security forces.
For Iranians who believed Trump’s assurances, the sense of betrayal runs deep. “Siavash hoped until the very end that Trump’s help would arrive,” recounted one Iranian about his cousin, shot dead during the demonstrations. Trump’s vow that “help is on the way” sounded hollow as the regime continued its killing spree. By mid-January, even as the White House claimed unconfirmed reports that Tehran had halted planned executions, the death toll from the crackdown only increased. Trump had drawn a red line only to see it repeatedly crossed without decisive US action.
The situation recalls Barack Obama’s infamous “red line” fiasco in Syria. Obama faced widespread criticism for failing to act after Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons in 2013, but Trump’s delay in Iran’s case risks making Obama’s mistake seem like a masterclass in diplomacy by comparison. The US president’s credibility among Iranians has been seriously damaged: “The people of Iran placed their trust in his words… If he fails to act…, that trust will be broken and the people of Iran will not forget who stood with them, and who turned away.”…
Trump has backed himself into a corner where every option is bad. Do nothing substantial, and he will be remembered by Iran’s freedom-seeking people as the US president who promised hope but left them to be massacred – a betrayal that will echo for generations. Strike Iran in a token show of force, and he will claim to have acted, while likely failing to end the ayatollahs’ rule or even their nuclear ambitions: a hollow, performative act to save face. Go all-in for regime change by military force, and he risks a massive regional war with no guarantee of success, which is a gamble far more dangerous than anything his predecessors attempted.
I differ with Andrew Fox here. If the Americans finally launch an all-out attack, bringing to bear the firepower that their two carrier strike groups, with nearly 200 planes, provide, how easy will it be for Iran, with its senior leadership, including the supreme leader and the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, presumably killed in the first hours of the American strike, to respond? Those threats Iran has made to attack American bases and allies throughout the region will be hard to make good on. And if Israel is attacked, the Jewish state’s response will be, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, far more devastating than what Israel did to Iran in the 12-Day War last June.
I allow myself to believe that the “massive armada” Trump has assembled is not meant merely to intimidate Iran into agreeing to Trump’s demands that Tehran halt its restarted nuclear program and turn over the 400 kg. of uranium that Iran has enriched to a level of 60%, just below weapons-grade, to give up its ballistic missiles, and to end support for its proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah. I think that now that the American armada is in place, and anti-missile defenses at American bases in the region are being hardened, that by the end of February, our planes and drones will be launched to do far more than destroy ballistic missiles and remaining nuclear facilities; the American attack will aim to decapitate Iran’s senior leadership, leading inexorably to regime change.
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