“He Incited the Iranians and Then Abandoned Them.”

Although Trump first threatened to intervene in Iran as early as January 2—saying that “if Iran shoots and brutally kills peaceful protesters, which is their usual practice, the United States will come to their aid”—his administration did not at that point view the protests as an existential threat to the ayatollahs’ regime. U.S. intelligence initially assessed the unrest as insufficiently large-scale and lacking momentum. That judgment was revised by January 8, when protest activity across the country intensified sharply.

On January 9, the White House held its first high-level meeting on a possible U.S. response to developments in Iran. The most senior official present was Vice President J.D. Vance. By that point, Iranian authorities had shut down the internet, begun using live ammunition, and moved toward mass killings of street protesters.

Shortly after the meeting, over the weekend of January 10—11, Trump was presented with several scenarios for a possible strike on Iran. At the same time, Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi made contact with Steve Witkoff, the U.S. president’s special envoy, to discuss possible paths toward de-escalation. “A few days later, this unofficial channel played a significant role in the decision Trump ultimately made,” Axios notes.

On January 13, Trump personally took part for the first time in a meeting focused on the protests in Iran. Until then, he had limited himself to reviewing intelligence briefings and reports from Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Advisers presented the president with options for a military response, including strikes on Iranian regime targets from warships and submarines. Trump ordered preparations for a possible attack to be completed, but never issued a direct order to carry it out.

On January 14, the White House and capitals across the Middle East expected Donald Trump to issue an order for a strike, Axios and The Washington Post reported. Iran closed its airspace, and personnel evacuations began from the largest U.S. military base in the region. It was assumed that a decision would follow the president’s daytime meeting with his national security team. The order, however, never came. “He wanted to keep watching how the situation developed,” an Axios source explained.

According to The Washington Post, on January 14—the day a decision on a strike against Iran was expected—Steve Witkoff conveyed a message to Donald Trump from Iranian authorities saying that, as part of de-escalation, they would abandon mass executions of protesters. Trump later cited this point when commenting on events in a more conciliatory tone. It is possible that this turn of events allowed him to save face when asked why his high-profile threats against the Iranian regime were never carried out. The key reasons for holding back from a strike, however, were more practical in nature.

Later that same day, January 14, Trump held a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu warned that Israel had not yet restored its capabilities after the 12-day war with Iran in the summer of 2025 and was not prepared for a potential response from Tehran to a U.S. strike. Similar concerns were voiced by other U.S. allies in the region—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt. They urged the White House to refrain from the use of force, citing fears about the consequences for stability across the Middle East.

Another significant factor was the Pentagon’s position, which pointed to the inadequacy of the U.S. military presence in the region to repel an Iranian counterattack. In recent months, a substantial share of U.S. naval forces had been concentrated in the Caribbean as part of a pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Finally, the decisive argument was the lack of confidence that the use of force would lead to a rapid change of power in Iran. Trump doubted that the proposed military scenarios would deliver the desired outcome without triggering large-scale problems for the entire region—and without damaging his own “pristine” reputation, The Washington Post notes.

“Would a strike have led to regime change [in Iran]? The answer is unequivocally ‘no.’ The negative consequences of an attack would have outweighed any benefit in terms of punishing the regime. Ultimately, this was a cost-benefit analysis,” a source close to the White House told the newspaper.

For now, Trump is holding back from striking Iran, but the option has not been taken off the table entirely, sources at The Washington Post and Axios stress. As the protest movement fades under the pressure of repression, many of its participants feel abandoned, The Guardian writes.

“The people of Iran believed him. If he does nothing against this brutal regime, trust will be shattered, and the people of Iran will not forget who stood with them and who turned away,” Azam Jangravi, an Iranian from Canada whose close friend was killed during the protests in Isfahan, told the newspaper.

“I used to think about how helpless we are: having to pray that another country would attack us for the sake of our rescue and freedom. But now I am consumed by anger. It feels like Trump has once again backed down and traded the lives of Iran’s young people,” said Anahita, an Iranian living in Turkey.

As one anonymous European official noted, many Iranians believed—and still believe—that the U.S. president would help them achieve a change of power. Otherwise, Trump risks going down in history as the man who “incited Iran’s civilians to take to the streets and promised assistance, only to abandon them,” he told The Washington Post.

It is difficult to assess how far Trump’s statements affected the trajectory of the protests or the severity of the regime’s response. They did, however, clearly shape the public rhetoric of Iran’s leadership. On January 17, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused Trump of being responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iranians whom, he said, Trump had “incited” to unrest.

In response, Trump called the ayatollah “a sick man.” “For a country to keep functioning—even at a very low level—its leadership must focus on proper governance rather than killing people by the thousands to maintain control,” he said, referring to Khamenei.

According to Iranian human rights groups as of January 18, at least 3,900 people had been killed during the protests. On January 19, an anonymous Iranian official confirmed that no fewer than five thousand people had died.