The NY Times and others are confirming that President Trump has recently been briefed on a series of new military strike options targeting Iran as he weighs whether to act on his threat to attack the country over its crackdown on protesters, which have also clearly themselves engaged in violent acts in some locales at times.
In some of among the well over 100 cities or towns where protests have raged since the end of December, buildings and even mosques have been burned, cars torched, and police officials reportedly shot and stabbed. Amid an internet blackout across the country, which has made accurate information hard to come by and/or verirfy, there is a battle of narratives and ‘infowar’ happening.
Starlink terminals were said to be smuggled into the country during the 2022 wave of protests, and so there has been some limited information and videos emerging even amid the several consecutive days of internet shutdown by the government.
President Trump during Friday’s meeting of oil executives again warned Iranian leadership not to kill protesters: “I’ve made the statement very strongly that if they start killing people like they have in the past, we will get involved,” he said. “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.”
Trump later narrowed the warning, “I tell the Iranian leaders: You better not start shooting, because we’ll start shooting, too.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on top of that issued on X that “The United States supports the brave people of Iran” – something much vaguer and coupled with no specific threat.
From there, unverified reports throughout the weekend said that body bags from protest deaths were piling up. By last week, around 30 people were reported killed, including several or more among police and security officials. But by Sunday into Monday that figure ballooned.