Protesters set a portrait of the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on fire as they take part in a rally in support of the current protest movement in Iran, outside Downing Street in London on January 11.  Neil Hall / EPA

By Bamo Nouri
Honorary Research Fellow, Department of International Politics, City St George's, University of London

The Conversation: 

Donald Trump is weighing military action in Iran over the state’s crackdown on protesters. Reports suggest that more than 600 people have been killed since the protests began in late December, with the US president saying the US military is now “looking at some very strong options”.

Trump has not yet elaborated on what these options are and has said that Iranian officials, keen to avoid a war with the US, had called him “to negotiate”. But he added that the US “may have to act before a meeting” if the deadly crackdown continues.

There is a wide spectrum of measures available to Washington should it decide to intervene in Iran. These range from diplomatic condemnation and an expanded sanctions regime, to cyber operations and military strikes. However, history weighs heavily against every move the US government may be considering.

Targeted sanctions and diplomatic pressure, which includes the 25% tariff rate recently introduced by Trump on any country that does business with Iran, remain the least escalatory tools. They allow the US to coordinate with its allies and signal moral support for protesters in Iran without triggering direct confrontation. Yet decades of experience show the limits of this approach.

Iran’s leadership has mastered how to absorb economic pressure, shift costs on to society and frame longstanding western sanctions as collective punishment imposed by hostile outsiders. The government in Tehran has adapted over time by developing alternative markets and expanding informal and non-dollar trade.

It has also boosted its economic resilience through regional networks, particularly in Iraq where political, financial and security ties help sustain revenue flows and cushion the impact of sanctions on the state.

There are other, more covert tools at Washington’s disposal, including cyber disruption and efforts to assist independent media or help protesters bypass internet shutdowns. These measures can help protesters stay visible internationally and complicate the state’s capacity to ramp up repression.

However, even here expectations should be modest. These tools may create friction within the Iranian elite by raising the costs of, and imposing technical difficulties on, surveillance and repression. But they do not change the core calculus of a regime that prioritises survival above all else.

At the most extreme end of the spectrum are military strikes. The rationale behind strikes would be to undermine the regime’s repression efforts. But in reality, they risk doing the opposite. Iran’s ruling system, and particularly the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps branch of the armed forces, has historically relied on external threats to consolidate power domestically.

A preemptive US strike would almost certainly hand Iran’s security apparatus the very narrative it seeks: an existential battle for national survival. This framing is already explicit in the discourse of the Iranian elite.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the hardline speaker of the Iranian parliament, warned in a recent speech that any attack on Iran would make Israel and all US military bases and assets in the region “legitimate targets”. Iranian state media then showed large crowds of regime supporters rallying in Tehran and other cities, chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

Military escalation is especially dangerous given the character of the current protest movement. Women have been at the forefront, challenging the ideological foundations of the state, while regions populated largely by ethnic Kurds have endured disproportionate levels of violence at the hands of the authorities.

These protests are civic, decentralised and rooted in social grievances. US military strikes would allow the Iranian state to overwrite that reality, recasting a diverse domestic movement as a foreign-backed security threat. In doing so, it would legitimise a far harsher crackdown than anything seen so far.

Shadow of 1953

Many ordinary Iranians are also cautious of direct US interference. This stems from a CIA-backed coup in 1953 that ousted Iran’s elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, and restored the monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The coup was followed by nearly two decades of repression, political policing and authoritarian rule closely aligned with western interests.

This experience is not distant history; it is a foundational trauma that continues to shape Iranian political consciousness. As a result, recent suggestions by Trump that the collapse of Iran’s theocratic system would naturally make way for a democratic transition cannot be disentangled from the memory of an external intervention that produced dictatorship rather than self-rule.

It also explains why many people inside Iran are sceptical of figures such as Reza Pahlavi, the son of country’s last shah who has often been promoted in the west as a possible future leader of Iran. Pahlavi remains symbolically tied to a system associated with oppression and foreign backing. This leaves him without the broad domestic legitimacy required for any credible democratic transition, regardless of his messaging.

Reza Pahlavi remains a divisive figure in Iran.  Salvatore Di Nolfi / EPA
The scepticism of Iranians is reinforced by recent regional experiences. In Iraq, foreign intervention hollowed out the state, leaving a weak system that has been co-opted by external powers and militias.

And in Syria, the collapse of central authority paved the way for a former al-Qaeda leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, to take power. He has been rebranded by western powers, including Trump, into a credible political figure despite his jihadist past.

These cases reinforce a belief across the Middle East that western intervention tends not to empower democratic forces. It instead appears to elevate the most organised and militarised parties to power, producing long-term instability rather than renewal.

Without a credible, homegrown transition, Iran risks fragmenting and sliding into chaos. For Washington, the most difficult reality may be that the wisest path is not bold intervention, but restraint combined with sustained support for Iranian society.

Genuine change in Iran cannot be engineered from the outside, especially at the point of a missile.