Iran warns it may act before an attack if it detects a threat

Popular unrest is not unfolding in isolation. It comes amid sustained external pressure, legal constraint and strategic exposure that have narrowed the Islamic Republic’s room for maneuver.

The protests are best understood not as a discrete domestic episode, but as the internal manifestation of a broader convergence: sanctions enforcement, legal isolation, military attrition and fiscal strain now intersect more directly with the regime’s ability to manage society.

At the center of this convergence lies a structural tension.

Tehran has long prioritized the maintenance of its coercive apparatus as the ultimate guarantor of regime survival, assuming it could continue to fund and mobilize those forces even as the wider population absorbed economic pain. The present unrest tests that assumption.

The question is no longer simply whether the state can repress protest—it has done so repeatedly—but whether it can sustain that approach under prolonged economic pressure.

The war that reshaped Iran’s strategic landscape

In June 2025, the Islamic Republic faced sustained direct military action against core elements of its nuclear and missile infrastructure, followed not by rapid diplomatic de-escalation but by heightened scrutiny and enforcement.

While Tehran avoided immediate escalation beyond the conflict, the war unsettled long-standing assumptions about deterrence, sanctuary and escalation control.

In its aftermath, the state’s survival was framed domestically as vindication. Yet continuity did not amount to recovery. Vulnerabilities exposed by the war could not be addressed simply through rebuilding or rhetorical reaffirmation.

Iran’s leadership has often equated endurance with strategic success. In this case, endurance masked erosion. The post-war environment became more constrained, not more permissive.

Sanctions and their toll

The reactivation of pre-2015 United Nations sanctions through the snapback mechanism in September 2025 constituted a second rupture—less visible, but no less consequential.

These measures reimposed binding legal constraints independent of the JCPOA framework.

Whatever Tehran’s posture toward negotiations, its obligations under revived Security Council resolutions and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty remain formally intact.

Iran’s refusal to comply with inspection-related understandings, alongside renewed threats to withdraw from the NPT, reflected a strategy of legal brinkmanship. But brinkmanship has limits.

Snapback has proven difficult to circumvent, constraining access to finance, insurance and energy markets. Even states inclined to engage Iran have struggled to shield it from the broader effects of renewed enforcement.

These constraints have translated into economic pressure. The protests now visible across Iran are therefore not only political acts; they are also the social consequence of legal and economic containment.

Missiles and strategic trade-offs

Under this pressure, Tehran has prioritized strategic reconstruction, particularly in its ballistic missile program. Facilities linked to missile development and solid-fuel production have shown signs of renewed activity, even as nuclear infrastructure remains under close scrutiny.

This reflects a belief that missile capability can restore leverage by raising the costs of external pressure.

Missile reconstruction aims to reconstitute coercive leverage and recover lost influence. Yet the strategic context has shifted. Measures once tolerated as incremental are now interpreted as preparatory, intensifying scrutiny and compressing decision timelines.

The domestic trade-offs are significant. Resources directed toward military-industrial reconstruction are resources unavailable for economic stabilization or social relief.

Iran’s rulers appear to have judged that sustaining coercive capacity outweighs the risks of popular discontent—a calculation that depends on continued loyalty within the security apparatus, even as economic conditions worsen.

A narrowing set of options

During the war, US President Donald Trump publicly raised the prospect of regime change—not as declared policy, but as a conceivable outcome should Iran prove unable to govern or stabilize the country.

While ambiguous, the remarks widened the range of interpretations available to Tehran.

As protests spread, that signalling evolved. In early January, Trump warned that violent suppression of peaceful protesters would provoke an American response. The emphasis shifted from missiles and enrichment to repression itself.

Taken together, these statements suggest a growing linkage in US rhetoric between Iran’s internal conduct and its external confrontation, though how far this would translate into policy remains uncertain.

For a system long reliant on compartmentalization—treating internal repression and external escalation as separate domains—this rhetoric further narrows room for maneuver.

Repression now carries not only domestic costs, but potential external risk.

Resilience—and its limits

None of this points to inevitability. The Islamic Republic has weathered previous crises, including acute pressure in 2009 and again in 2022, through repression, fragmentation of opposition and strategic patience.

Those precedents caution against linear narratives of collapse.

Yet the present unrest differs in one important respect: it is embedded in sustained economic degradation rather than episodic political mobilization. Repression can suppress protest, but it cannot substitute for economic viability indefinitely.

In 1978, prolonged disruption in Iran’s oil sector did not immediately bring down the state, nor did repression collapse. What faltered was the state’s capacity to function as revenues declined and administrative coherence eroded.

The parallel should not be overstated. But it underscores a familiar pattern: regimes rarely fail at the height of coercion; they falter when the material foundations of governance erode to the point that authority can no longer translate power into control.

Whether the Islamic Republic is approaching such a threshold remains uncertain. What is clearer is that its margin for error has narrowed. The 12-day war did not end Iran’s confrontation with its adversaries, it reshaped it.

The unrest now visible across the country is not separate from that confrontation—it is one of its most consequential domestic expressions.

In a message published on his Truth Social account, Donald Trump warned that if Iran’s rulers kill peaceful protesters, the United States would act to save the Iranian people.

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

The phrase “locked and loaded” is a classic military expression in English, meaning a weapon is armed, ammunition is in place, and it is ready to fire. Its roots lie in military training, particularly in the US armed forces, and the term has appeared in military literature since at least the eighteenth century.

Formally incorporated into weapons manuals around the time of World War II, the expression has long carried an operational and warning connotation. It is not merely a metaphor or casual figure of speech, but language traditionally used to indicate readiness for immediate action.

The expression has also become widely familiar through popular culture. In Hollywood war films, beginning notably with the 1949 film Sands of Iwo Jima starring John Wayne, “lock and load” is commonly used to signal the imminent start of combat. The phrase has since been embedded in video games such as Call of Duty and Battlefield, where it typically precedes intense fighting scenes.

Trump has used similar language in previous high-tension situations, including during confrontations involving North Korea and Syria.

Senior US officials have also employed the term in moments of crisis, signaling that the military option is not only under consideration but operationally prepared.

'US ready for military action'

International relations scholar Kamran Matin described Trump’s wording as an explicit threat that could be interpreted as readiness for military action.

Matin told Iran International that in Trump’s latest remarks, the scope of the threat appeared to expand beyond Iran’s missile or regional activities to include the government’s violent response to domestic protests.

At the same time, he cautioned that Trump’s personal style must be taken into account, noting that the president is known for shifting positions and statements that allow for multiple interpretations.

However, Matin said that verbal threats do not always translate into action.

Despite signs of military preparedness by the United States and Israel in the region, Matin emphasized that there remains a significant gap between verbal threats, actual military readiness, and the political decision to launch a direct attack.

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.

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.

The phrase “It Will Happen Again” appears above images of sites targeted during the June war, including Israel’s Nevatim airbase and the Haifa refinery and power plant, as well as Qatar’s Al‑Udeid airbase, which hosts American troops and was targeted in June.

Iranian officials framed those strikes as only a fraction of the country’s missile capabilities and warned that future retaliation could be more extensive.

The new banners come after recent remarks by US President Donald Trump on his support for possible Israeli attacks on missile or nuclear sites in Iran, prompting senior state and military officials in Tehran to issue a series of defiant and threatening messages.

Trump said on Monday he would support possible Israeli strikes on Iran if the Islamic Republic further develops its ballistic missile or nuclear programs, warning Tehran against rebuilding military capabilities destroyed in Israeli and American airstrikes in June.

​“Israel should remember the blows it received in the recent war and take a lesson from the previous attack before thinking of entering a new one,” IRGC spokesman Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Naeini said on Wednesday.

“Iran’s power is increasing by the day, and Israelis only talk about a weak Iran in the media while they themselves know very well how strong our missile capabilities are,” Naeini added.

The United States held five rounds of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program earlier this year, for which Trump set a 60‑day deadline. When no agreement was reached by the 61st day on June 13, Israel launched a surprise military offensive, followed by US strikes on June 22 targeting key nuclear facilities in Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow.

The attacks killed several nuclear scientists along with hundreds of military personnel and civilians, while Iranian counterattacks killed 32 Israeli civilians and an off‑duty soldier, according to official tallies from both sides.

On June 23, Iran launched around 14 short‑ and medium‑range ballistic missiles at Al‑Udeid base as part of its retaliation for US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities the previous day.

US officials said air defenses in Qatar intercepted 13 of the missiles and that one fell short of the base, but satellite imagery later indicated a missile had struck and damaged a large US radar dome used for secure communications, while Washington reported no American casualties.

Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons and says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, while Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has said dealing with Trump is beneath the dignity of the Islamic Republic and officials have rejected US demands to end uranium enrichment and curb missile capabilities.

The United States has long insisted that Iran must completely halt its uranium enrichment program, stop supporting its armed allies in the Middle East and accept restrictions on its ballistic missile program. Tehran has rejected the demands.

Citing a US official and two other sources familiar with the discussion, Axios said Netanyahu argued that further action could be needed to prevent Iran from rebuilding its nuclear and missile capabilities after last June’s 12-day conflict, which both leaders have described publicly as a success.

Trump told reporters after the meeting that the United States would strike Iran again if it attempted to reconstitute its nuclear program, while saying he would prefer to reach a nuclear agreement with Tehran.

A US official told Axios that Trump would likely support renewed military action if Washington judged Iran to be taking “real and verifiable” steps to rebuild its nuclear program.

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  Trump says he'd ‘absolutely’ back possible Israeli strikes on Iran

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  Iran pushes back at Trump warning, stresses need for ballistic deterrence

Axios said Netanyahu briefed Trump on Israeli concerns that Iran was rebuilding its ballistic missile program and also raised Hezbollah’s efforts to replenish long-range missile stockpiles in Lebanon.

Israel struck both nuclear-related and conventional military targets in Iran during the June fighting, while US forces focused on nuclear facilities.

The sources said no agreement was reached on specific timelines or conditions for future strikes.

Axios added that some US and Israeli officials see the greatest near-term risk of a wider conflict as miscalculation, with either side acting pre-emptively on fears of an impending attack.