Tensions between United States and Iran has continued to escalate after U.S President Donald Trump and top Iranian officials exchanged a series of sharp military action threats.
The escalation comes in the wake of intensifying anti-government protests across Iran and lingering friction over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions.
Taking to his official account on Truth Social, Trump on Friday, January 2, 2026, issued military action threats against Iran over internal unrest in the country.
Responding to reports of fatalities during economic protests sparked by the collapse of the Iranian rial, the Trump warned that the U.S. is prepared to act.
”If Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” Trump wrote. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
The “locked and loaded” rhetoric comes amid Trump’s foreign policy following Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025, a U.S.-led strike that targeted Iranian nuclear enrichment sites.
However, officials in Tehran have quickly move to kicked against Trump’s military threats against Iran.
Iranian leadership was quick to dismiss Trump’s comments as “psychological warfare” and dangerous “adventurism.” Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned that any U.S. intervention would lead to “chaos in the entire region” and the destruction of American interests.
Larijani, a former parliament speaker also alleged on the social platform X that Israel and the U.S. were stoking the demonstrations.
“Trump should know that intervention by the U.S. in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of the U.S. interests,” Larijani wrote on X, which the Iranian government blocks.
“The people of the U.S. should know that Trump began the adventurism. They should take care of their own soldiers.”
Also, reacting to Trump’s military action threats against Iran, Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who previously was the council’s secretary for years, warned that “any interventionist hand that gets too close to the security of Iran will be cut.”
“The people of Iran properly know the experience of ‘being rescued’ by Americans: from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza,” he added on X.
The current protests, now in their sixth day, have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations. However, the demonstrations have yet to be countrywide and have not been as intense as those surrounding the death of Amini, who was detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.
Iran’s civilian government under reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has been trying to signal it wants to negotiate with protesters. However, Pezeshkian has acknowledged there is not much he can do as Iran’s rial has rapidly depreciated, with $1 now costing some 1.4 million rials. That sparked the initial protests.
The protests, taking root in economic issues, have heard demonstrators chant against Iran’s theocracy as well.
Months after the war, Iran said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. However, those talks have yet to happen as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned Tehran against reconstituting its atomic program.
