Why Trump Needs to Act Right Now in Iran

Time is running out for Donald Trump to act on Iran. He has repeatedly warned that he will intervene militarily if the regime in Iran continues to kill protestors. And it has done so, with ever greater lethality. The number of protesters killed has gone from 217 to 650 in the first two weeks, and now a member of the regime has admitted that 2,000 of the “terrorists” — that is, unarmed protesters in nearly 200 cities across Iran — have been killed. Iranians abroad provide an even higher number: they claim that the death toll among protesters across Iran as of January 13 may have reached as high as 12,000, or even 20,000. Everyone is waiting for Trump to show his mettle, to make good on his threat, and to do it soon, before the murderous regime in Tehran manages through massacres to suppress the demonstrators.

More on why Trump should launch an attack without further delay can be found here: “Time Runs Out as Iran’s Security Forces Kill Hundreds of Protesters,” by Mardo Soghom, Middle East Forum, January 11, 2026:

In delay there lies no plenty, Mr. President. If another few weeks pass during which a maddened and ruthless regime kills another ten thousand, the revolt will be over. The Iranian people are waiting for you to make good on your promise to intervene if the regime killed protestors. Now it has killed at least twelve thousand of them, and some say as many as 20,000. Why not send those American bombs and missiles right now, before any other targets are hit, to strike “the head of the snake,” meaning the Supreme Leader and his closest cronies, including his son and heir apparent Mojtaba Khamenei?

Five times the Iranians have engaged in mass protests against the regime: in 2009, 2017, 2019, 2022, and today. And four times, the regime has managed to suppress, through extreme violence, the protesters. This time, however, the protests are much more numerous, spreading to 193 cities across Iran, and the estimates of participants now run into the hundreds of thousands. This is the worst crisis the Islamic Republic has ever faced. And it has never been weaker. Its $100 billion nuclear program was set back by several years after the 12-day Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities in June, as well as the one-day attack by the U.S. on June 22 that used 30,000 pound bunker-buster bombs to “obliterate” — in Trump’s words — the facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan. In addition, the Israeli air force destroyed many of Iran’s ballistic missiles and the plants that manufacture them. And since October 2023, the IDF has battered Iran’s proxies — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen — with many men killed and many weapons destroyed. And Iran’s last proxy was Syria under Assad. Just after the rebel forces of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew Assad at the beginning of September, in the interregnum before Ahmed al-Sharaa could consolidate his power, Israel quite sensibly took the occasion to destroy most of the weaponry that Assad’s disintegrating army left behind when his regime fell and he fled to Moscow. Now the Islamic Republic is on its own.

Unlike during the June war, Israel is content not to do all the heavy lifting, but to leave it up to Washington. Trump has done nothing to encourage Israeli intervention; whatever happens will be his alone to claim. And an Israeli attack could backfire, providing the regime with an excuse for its actions, because those protestors, it will claim, are mere pawns being used by “the Jews,” and hence their cause is illegitimate.

Trump could order a blockade of the port at Bandar Abbas, where so much of Iran’s oil is loaded onto tankers for China. He could strike the headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, wiping out their high command. He could hit the Iranian police headquarters. He could bomb the ballistic missiles still extant and the plants where they are made. He could hit all the warehouses where the IRGC, the Iranian army, and the Iranian police store weapons and ammunition. None of this would require those “boots on the ground” that everyone in Washington is so keen to avoid, given the how badly things went awry in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But as soon as the sites to be targeted inside Iran are chosen — by now, almost three weeks since the demonstrations began, they must already have been chosen — there should be no more threatening of things to come should protesters be killed. As the whole world knows, they are already being killed; more than 12,000 of them are piled up in the morgues and on the streets. What does it take for Trump to do what he has repeatedly promised to do? Trump cannot wait any longer, because the protestors cannot wait. They don’t need more promises of what he will do if protestors are killed. His delay has become demoralizing. It’s long past time for bombs away.