Trump holds off on military action against Iran's protest crackdown as
he 'explores' Tehran messages
[January 13, 2026]
By AAMER MADHANI
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has arrived at a delicate
moment as he weighs whether to order a U.S. military response against
the Iranian government as it continues a violent crackdown on protests
that have left more than 600 dead and led to the arrests of thousands
across the country.
The U.S. president has repeatedly threatened Tehran with military action
if his administration found the Islamic Republic was using deadly force
against antigovernment protesters. It's a red line that Trump has said
he believes Iran is “starting to cross” and has left him and his
national security team weighing “very strong options.”
But the U.S. military — which Trump has warned Tehran is “locked and
loaded” — appears, at least for the moment, to have been placed on
standby mode as Trump ponders next steps, saying that Iranian officials
want to have talks with the White House.
“What you’re hearing publicly from the Iranian regime is quite different
from the messages the administration is receiving privately, and I think
the president has an interest in exploring those messages,” White House
press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday. “However, with
that said, the president has shown he’s unafraid to use military options
if and when he deems necessary, and nobody knows that better than Iran.”
Hours later, Trump announced on social media that he would slap 25%
tariffs on countries doing business with Tehran “effective immediately”
— his first action aimed at penalizing Iran for the protest crackdown,
and his latest example of using tariffs as a tool to force friends and
foes on the global stage to bend to his will.
China, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Brazil and Russia are among
economies that do business with Tehran. The White House declined to
offer further comment or details about the president’s tariff
announcement.
The White House has offered scant details on Iran's outreach for talks,
but Leavitt confirmed that the president's special envoy Steve Witkoff
will be a key player engaging Tehran.
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and
key White House National Security Council officials began meeting Friday
to develop a “suite of options,” from a diplomatic approach to military
strikes, to present to Trump in the coming days, according to a U.S.
official familiar with the internal administration deliberations. The
official was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the
condition of anonymity.
Trump told reporters Sunday evening that a “meeting is being set up”
with Iranian officials but cautioned that “we may have to act because of
what’s happening before the meeting.”
“We’re watching the situation very carefully,” Trump said.
Can the protests be sustained?
Demonstrations in Iran continue, but analysts say it remains unclear
just how long protesters will remain on the street.
An internet blackout imposed by Tehran makes it hard for protesters to
understand just how widespread the demonstrations have become, said Vali
Nasr, a State Department adviser during the early part of the Obama
administration, and now professor of international affairs and Middle
East studies at Johns Hopkins University.
“It makes it very difficult for news from one city or pictures from one
city to incense or motivate action in another city,” Nasr said. “The
protests are leaderless, they're organization-less. They are actually
genuine eruptions of popular anger. And without leadership and direction
and organization, such protests, not just in Iran, everywhere in the
world — it’s very difficult for them to sustain themselves.”
Meanwhile, Trump is dealing with a series of other foreign policy
emergencies around the globe.
It's been just over a week since the U.S. military launched a successful
raid to arrest Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and remove him from power. The
U.S. continues to mass an unusually large number of troops in the
Caribbean Sea.
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President Donald Trump waves after arriving on Air Force One from
Florida, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP
Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Trump is also focused on trying to get Israel and Hamas onto the
second phase of a peace deal in Gaza and broker an agreement between
Russia and Ukraine to end the nearly four-year war in Eastern
Europe.
But advocates urging Trump to take strong action against Iran say
this moment offers an opportunity to further diminish the theocratic
government that's ruled the country since the Islamic revolution in
1979.
The demonstrations are the biggest Iran has seen in years — protests
spurred by the collapse of Iranian currency that have morphed into a
larger test of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's repressive
rule.
Iran, through the country’s parliamentary speaker, has warned that
the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if
Washington uses force to protect demonstrators.
Trump allies want to see US back protesters
Some of Trump's hawkish allies in Washington are calling on the
president not to miss the opportunity to act decisively against a
vulnerable Iranian government that they argue is reeling after last
summer's 12-day war with Israel and battered by U.S. strikes in June
on key Iranian nuclear sites.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on social media Monday that the
moment offers Trump the chance to show that he's serious about
enforcing red lines. Graham alluded to former Democratic President
Barack Obama in 2012 setting a red line on the use of chemical
weapons by Syria's Bashar Assad against his own people — only not to
follow through with U.S. military action after the then-Syrian
leader crossed that line the following year.
“It is not enough to say we stand with the people of Iran,” Graham
said. “The only right answer here is that we act decisively to
protect protesters in the street — and that we’re not Obama —
proving to them we will not tolerate their slaughter without
action.”
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another close Trump
ally, said the “goal of every Western leader should be to destroy
the Iranian dictatorship at this moment of its vulnerability.”
“In a few weeks either the dictatorship will be gone or the Iranian
people will have been defeated and suppressed and a campaign to find
the ringleaders and kill them will have begun,” Gingrich said in an
X post. “There is no middle ground.”
Indeed, Iranian authorities have managed to snuff out rounds of mass
protests before, including the “Green Movement” following the
disputed election in 2009 and the “woman, life, freedom” protests
that broke out after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in custody of the
state’s morality police in 2022.
Trump and his national security team have already begun reviewing
options for potential military action and he is expected to continue
talks with his team this week.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think
tank, said “there is a fast-diminishing value to official statements
by the president promising to hold the regime accountable, but then
staying on the sidelines.”
Trump, Taleblu noted, has shown a desire to maintain “maximum
flexibility rooted in unpredictability” as he deals with
adversaries.
“But flexibility should not bleed into a policy of locking in or
bailing out an anti-American regime which is on the ropes at home
and has a bounty on the president’s head abroad,” he added.
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