What 'locked and loaded' signals in Trump’s message backing Iran protests

Washington would step in if protesters are violently killed, Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

“If Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” he wrote. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

Protests turn deadly

Trump’s remarks came as protests in Iran reached a fifth consecutive day on Thursday, with at least seven protesters reported killed by security forces. Demonstrations spread to new cities, including the clerical stronghold of Qom, where crowds openly called for the downfall of the theocracy.

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  Iran protests hit deadliest day as unrest spreads to clerical stronghold Qom

Earlier, a US official said the protests reflect deep public anger at years of government failure. In a written statement on Thursday, a spokesperson for the United States Department of State described the unrest as an expression of the Iranian people’s “understandable anger.”

“The protests reflect the understandable anger of the Iranian people at their government's failures and excuses,” the official said, accusing Tehran of neglecting the economy, agriculture, water and electricity for decades while “squandering billions on terrorist proxies and nuclear weapons research.” The statement also cited Iran’s involvement in acts of “terrorism against the United States and its allies.”

Demonstrations were reported across dozens of locations, from Tehran and Isfahan to Lorestan, Mazandaran, Khuzestan, Hamadan and Fars. Protesters chanted slogans directly targeting the ruling system and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Pro-monarchy slogans dominated many rallies, highlighting how the unrest has moved beyond economic grievances into open political defiance. Security forces used live fire in several cities, including Nurabad in Lorestan and Hamedan in western Iran, where videos showed officers shooting at demonstrators who remained in the streets despite the crackdown.

The Ministry of Defence Export Center, known as Mindex, presents itself as the export arm of Iran’s defense ministry. It advertises more than 3,000 products across categories including armaments, rockets and missiles, aviation, marine platforms, and radar and optical systems.

The portal’s payment terms say contracts can be settled using “digital currencies,” local currencies in the buyer’s country and barter arrangements, alongside more traditional bank transfers.

Mindex’s online platform, hosted on an Iranian cloud provider already blacklisted by Washington, says decades of experience in overseas sales and says it works with a number of foreign clients.

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A frequently asked questions section reassures potential buyers that “given the general policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding circumvention of sanctions, there is no problem in implementing the contract,” and promises that purchased products will reach their destination “as soon as possible,” FT reported.

According to the center’s own “About us” page, Mindex began its marketing activity in 1989 and is “affiliated to the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics,” (MODAFL) a ministry that has been under US sanctions since 2007 for supporting Iran’s missile and conventional arms programs.

Washington has repeatedly targeted MODAFL‑linked front companies and procurement networks, warning that foreign entities supplying or buying military hardware through such channels risk secondary sanctions and potential exclusion from the US financial system.

Recent US designations have also singled out Iran‑linked “shadow banking” and crypto networks accused of helping Tehran move money for oil and weapons sales outside formal banking channels, underscoring the risks for buyers using digital assets to pay Mindex.

US Treasury in recent months has sanctioned multiple Iran‑linked networks accused of using front companies and alternative payment channels to facilitate weapons transfers to partners such as Russia and Venezuela, warning that digital currencies do not shield transactions from enforcement.

Demonstrations were reported across dozens of locations, from Tehran and Isfahan to Lorestan, Mazandaran, Khuzestan, Hamadan, and Fars, with protesters chanting slogans directly targeting the ruling system and the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

For the first time in the past five decades, pro-monarchy slogans have come to dominate the chants.

Security forces used live fire in several cities, including Nurabad in Lorestan and Hamadan in western Iran, where videos showed officers shooting at demonstrators who remained in the streets despite the crackdown.

Protesters killed by security forces

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) has so far documented the deaths of at least seven protesters, mostly killed on Thursday.

Iran International has managed to speak with the families of three victims.

In Lorestan, 28‑year‑old barber Shayan Asadollahi was killed after security forces in pickup trucks opened fire on protesters in the city of Azna on Thursday, a relative told Iran International.

Iran International also spoke with the relatives of Dariush Ansari Bakhtiarvand in Fooladshahr and Amir‑Hessam Khodayarifard in Kuhdasht, who were killed on Wednesday night.

The unrest has taken on a distinctly anti‑government tone, with protesters in Bandar Abbas chanting “Death to the entire system” and "Long live the Shah (King)”, while pro-monarchy graffiti and slogans appeared in Esfahan and Sistan and Baluchestan.

Recent reports said evening and nighttime demonstrations in multiple cities including Bandar Abbas, Azna, Hamedan, Qom, Qazvin and Babol.

In the restive southeast, a group of Baluch prisoners urged residents of Sistan and Baluchestan to join the “wave of freedom” and support demonstrations across the country, recalling that the province was one of the main hotspots of the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests and repeatedly faced deadly crackdowns.

Iranian protesters chanted pro-monarchy slogans in Qom, a core stronghold of Shiite clerics and the Islamic Republic, signaling a major symbolic breach in a city long seen as politically untouchable.

Spectators at a football match in Esfahan were also filmed chanting “Reza Shah, may your soul rest in peace,” underscoring the prominence of pro‑monarchy slogans in this wave of protests.

They called on people to reclaim streets they said “belong to the people, not dictators,” and to make chants such as “Death to the dictator” and “Freedom, justice, Iranian republic” echo “like thunder across Iran.”

Caution and support

The Paris‑based Narges Foundation, run by the family of jailed Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi, issued a statement on her official X account declaring that “silence is not an option” as streets once again see live fire, tear gas, beatings and mass arrests, and urging solidarity with families of those killed, detainees held incommunicado and the wounded denied safe treatment.

Former senior lawmaker Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, who once headed parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, warned in his own X post that “all the ideologies of the world are not worth the tears of one mother” and urged Iranians to ensure their hands “do not get stained with the blood of even one Iranian.”

While demonstrators chant against the entire system, the government of President Masoud Pezeshkian has focused its response on reshuffling economic managers and pressing ahead with long-delayed currency reforms, betting that technical fixes can still defuse a crisis that has increasingly become political.

The renewed unrest was triggered by a sharp bout of currency volatility that briefly pushed the U.S. dollar to around 1.45 million rials on the open market, intensifying already high inflation and accelerating the erosion of purchasing power.

“Protesting the dollar is protesting instability; protesting a life that cannot be planned,” wrote journalist Mustafa Danandeh in the daily Ettelaat. “People who do not know whether six months from now their rent will double, medicine will be available, or their job will survive.”

A new old face

In response, Pezeshkian reshuffled the leadership of the Central Bank of Iran, reappointing Abdolnaser Hemmati and reviving a controversial push toward a single exchange rate—an idea long advocated by economists but repeatedly stalled by politics, sanctions and entrenched interests.

Hemmati, a prominent centrist figure, had been forced out less than seven months into his tenure as economy minister after parliament impeached him over exchange-rate volatility.

His return—this time to a post that does not require parliamentary approval—has infuriated hardline lawmakers and highlighted widening rifts within the political elite.

“This explicitly ignores parliament’s vote and shows disregard for the will of representatives,” said Zeynab Gheisari, an ultra-hardline lawmaker from Tehran. Another hardline legislator, Amir-Hossein Sabeti, said the move demonstrated the government’s “disregard for the people and the country’s economy.”

In his first public remarks after the appointment, Hemmati laid out familiar priorities: controlling inflation, managing the foreign exchange market and tightening oversight of banks.

It’s the economy—or is it?

The reform effort centers on dismantling Iran’s multi-rate currency regime, a system dating back to the Iran–Iraq war of the 1980s, when preferential exchange rates were introduced to subsidize essential imports. Over time, the widening gap between official and market rates turned the system into a major source of rent-seeking, corruption and uncertainty.

As the business news outlet Tejarat News noted, the policy “failed to provide sustainable support for domestic producers and created severe uncertainty for investment and production planning.”

The Entekhab news site cautioned that in an economy burdened by sanctions, fiscal shortfalls and political distrust, inflationary expectations tend to regenerate quickly once short-term interventions fade.

On Thursday, the president announced the immediate elimination of the subsidized exchange rate of 285,000 rials per dollar for basic goods and animal feed imports, saying the subsidy would instead be transferred directly to consumers to eliminate “rent, bribery and corruption.”

In unusually blunt remarks, Pezeshkian acknowledged that public anger was directed at the state itself. Dissatisfaction, he said, was the government’s responsibility, adding that “there is no need to look for America to blame.”

Many protesters appear keenly aware that Pezeshkian’s authority is tightly constrained by entrenched power centers, a reality reflected in slogans that target the theocratic system itself and its supreme leader rather than the exchange rate.

The protests, triggered by rising prices, quickly moved beyond economic grievances. Slogans once again targeted the ruling system itself, with demonstrators openly calling for its downfall.

In both 2019 and 2022, when similar chants echoed across Iran, authorities moved swiftly to shut down the internet, cutting off communication with the outside world and crippling domestic news coverage. Protesters were rapidly branded as enemy foot soldiers, and state media framed the unrest almost exclusively as a foreign-backed security threat.

This time, the state broadcaster appears to have adopted a more cautious line, quoting hardline outlets on the causes of the protests while limiting its own commentary, perhaps to avoid provoking demonstrators—or to reclaim an audience long lost to social media and foreign-based Persian-language outlets.

‘Right to protest’

State television presenters have repeatedly asserted in recent days that “protesters have every right to protest rising prices.”

That framing mirrors President Massoud Pezeshkian’s recent assertion that “protesters do not need a permit to take to the streets under the Iranian Constitution.”

The statement was always legally correct, but no senior official or major outlet had previously expressed it so plainly.

At a December 31 press conference, government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani reiterated that the administration recognizes the public’s right to protest, adding that Pezeshkian has pledged to listen to citizens and resolve their problems.

The new central bank governor, Abdolnasser Hemmati, issued sweeping promises: to control inflation, end privileges for well-connected individuals and address banking irregularities, including unauthorized withdrawals from government accounts.

Hemmati previously held senior economic posts under Presidents Rouhani and Pezeshkian without achieving those goals, but on December 31 he insisted he now has “full authority” and is determined to deliver.

Cities shut down

At the same time, the government has taken steps to sap momentum from the streets.

Beginning December 31, schools and offices in 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces were closed for four days, a move widely seen as an attempt to replace open unrest with a fragile calm—particularly as the closures were announced amid unusually clear weather in the capital, rather than the pollution that has forced similar shutdowns in recent months.

As heavy smog over Tehran briefly lifted after months, some protesters remarked—almost incredulously—that Mount Damavand was visible again on the northeastern horizon, an unintended symbol of dissent long presumed dormant but never extinguished.

Yet an ominous sign looms as well.

Ali Fadavi, the IRGC’s deputy commander, has been replaced by Ahmad Vahidi, a figure known for harsher methods and strict loyalty to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Reports already suggest that shootings at demonstrators and arrests increased on Thursday, the fifth day of unrest.

It remains to be seen whether Tehran sustains its current posture if unrest deepens—or reverts to its familiar factory settings of internet disruption and brute force.