US President Donald Trump has been briefed in recent days on new options for military strikes in Iran as he considers following through on his threat to attack the country for cracking down on protesters, according to multiple US officials familiar with the matter.
Trump has not made a final decision, but the officials said he was seriously considering authorising a strike in response to the Iranian regime’s efforts to suppress demonstrations set off by widespread economic grievances. The President has been presented with a range of options, including strikes on non-military sites in Tehran, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations.
Asked about planning for potential strikes, the White House referred to Trump’s public comments and social media posts in recent days. “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before,” Trump wrote on social media on Saturday. “The USA stands ready to help!!!”
The demonstrations in Iran began in late December in response to a currency crisis, but they have since spread and grown in size as many Iranians have called for wholesale changes to the country’s authoritarian government. Iranian officials have threatened to crack down on the demonstrations, and dozens of protesters have been killed.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to use lethal force against the Iranian government for its efforts to suppress demonstrations, and on Friday, he said that Iran "is in big trouble".
“I’ve made the statement very strongly that if they start killing people like they have in the past, we will get involved,” Trump told reporters on Friday, while meeting with oil executives. “We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts. And that doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts. So we don’t want that to happen.”
Secretary of state Marco Rubio spoke over phone on Saturday morning with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, according to three people with knowledge of the call. The two leaders discussed the protests in Iran, along with the situation in Syria and a peace deal in Gaza, the three people said.
Early on Saturday, Rubio wrote on a personal social media account that the US "supports the brave people of Iran".
Since Trump ordered the US military to attack Venezuela on January 3 and seize Nicolás Maduro, the country’s leader, the administration has emphasised in public statements that Trump is ready to take bold action in other contexts.
On Friday, the state department posted a video with scenes of the nighttime attack on Venezuela on an official social media account, accompanied by the lines: “Do not play games with President Trump. When he says he’ll do something, he means it.”
Senior US officials said on Saturday that at least some of the options presented to Trump for the situation in Iran would be tied directly to elements of the country’s security services that are using violence to put down the growing protests.
At the same time, though, US officials said they had to be careful that any military strikes did not have the opposite effect — galvanising the Iranian public to support the government — or trigger a set of retaliatory strikes that could threaten US military and diplomatic personnel in the region.
New York Times News Service