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US President Donald Trump’s dramatic naval buildup in the Middle East appears to have generated more strategic uncertainty than clarity both in Tehran and in Washington.
Over the weekend, as the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group moved closer to the Persian Gulf, US Central Command Commander Admiral Brad Cooper travelled to Israel—a visit widely interpreted as evidence of intensified coordination ahead of a potential move against Iran.
Trump has framed the possibility of intervention in explicitly humanitarian terms, warning Tehran against the killing of protesters and asserting that US pressure has already halted hundreds of planned executions.
Yet despite naval deployments, repeated warnings, and unmistakable signaling, no kinetic action has followed.
This restraint has endured even as credible estimates from human rights organisations and the United Nations place civilian deaths from the crackdown at over 20,000. Iran International’s editorial statement of January 25 cites a figure of 36,000 killed, making this the bloodiest episode in the Islamic Republic’s history.
Jurists and international lawyers have argued that the scale and systematic nature of the violence may fall within the jurisdictional scope of the International Criminal Court under the Rome Statute.
Washington’s response has followed a different rhythm: maximalist language paired with deliberate restraint. Carrier deployments have provided leverage; sanctions and tariffs have expanded; diplomatic and military signaling has intensified. But strikes—despite the scale of civilian killing—have not materialized.
Restraint as policy
What, then, is actually holding President Trump back?
Humanitarian concern looms large in Trump’s public messaging. But this framing sits in visible tension with the administration’s broader strategic doctrine.
The National Security Strategy of November 2025 reiterates an America First approach, prioritizing US interests while explicitly seeking to avoid committing American forces to conflicts that risk metastasizing into “endless wars.”
The 2026 National Defense Strategy adopts a markedly harsher register toward Iran. It accuses Tehran of having “American blood on its hands,” framing it not only as an abusive authoritarian regime but as an enduring strategic adversary.
And yet, in a notable departure from Trump’s instinctive aversion to foreign entanglement, he has drawn explicit red lines around the execution of protesters and the use of lethal force against demonstrators. Any prospective action, he has suggested, would be framed not as conquest or regime change, but as rescue.
The evidence, however, suggests that humanitarian imperatives function more as legitimizing rhetoric than as decisive drivers of policy. Had halting mass killing been the primary determinant, intervention might plausibly have followed the peak of repression in early January.
Instead, Trump has oscillated between “locked and loaded” warnings and expressions of hope that force will not be required.
Strategic calculations
The deeper constraints lie elsewhere—in hard strategic and political realities that humanitarian language alone cannot dissolve.
First, escalation risk dominates the calculus.
Tehran has made clear that any US strike would trigger retaliation across multiple theatres: Israel, American bases in the region, and potentially global energy routes. The prospect of asymmetric escalation—through ballistic missiles, proxy warfare, cyber operations, or disruption of the Strait of Hormuz—carries profound economic and security consequences.
Regional partners, including Israel, are widely reported to have urged caution, acutely aware that even a limited strike could spiral into a broader conflagration.
In this context, the “armada” functions less as a prelude to war than as a tool of coercive signaling: capability without commitment. Trump’s repeated insistence that he “would rather not see anything happen” reflects not humanitarian restraint, but an aversion to cascading costs that could rapidly exceed any political or strategic gain.
Second, domestic political calculations weigh heavily.
American fatigue with Middle Eastern military entanglements remains deep-seated. Polling consistently shows majority opposition to new wars, even when framed around humanitarian catastrophe.
Trump’s political identity remains rooted in rejecting the interventionist excesses of the post–Cold War era. Forceful rhetoric projects resolve, carrier deployments demonstrate action, sanctions impose pain—all without exposing U.S. forces to open-ended conflict.
Third, strategic leverage without war remains attractive.
The current posture weakens Iran indirectly. Pressure on the nuclear program intensifies. Economic isolation deepens through secondary sanctions and tariffs on third-party trade. Internal regime fissures may widen as elites confront the costs of isolation without the rallying effect of a foreign attack.
Humanitarian language helps justify this approach publicly, but the underlying strategy prioritizes containment, deterrence, and attrition—not Responsibility-to-Protect-style intervention.
All tabs open
Taken together, Trump’s posture reflects a president operating within a narrow corridor between moral outrage, strategic constraint, and political risk. Restraint, however, should not be mistaken for permanence.
The current alignment keeps open a range of options that could be activated rapidly should circumstances shift.
A limited, precision strike aimed at degrading Tehran’s capacity for internal repression would suggest a convergence between humanitarian rhetoric and coercive deterrence. A broader campaign would signal that strategic imperatives had finally eclipsed restraint.
For Iranians facing repression, this uncertainty itself exerts pressure—on the regime no less than on Washington.
For policymakers, the lesson is neither complacency nor inevitability, but clarity: intervention, if it comes, will arrive not as a moral reflex, but at the moment when humanitarian catastrophe, strategic threat, and political risk briefly align.
A senior Iranian military official said on Monday that the United States would not be able to mount a surprise or decisive blow against the Islamic Republic, state-affiliated Mehr News Agency reported.
The unnamed official at the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, Iran's central military nerve center, was speaking as a US aircraft carrier, warships and fighter planes were arriving in the region.
US President Donald Trump is weighing options to attack the country after its mass killings of protestors, according to US media reports, and has favored overwhelming and decisive sharp blows against adversaries.
“The notion of carrying out a so-called limited, rapid and clean operation against Iran stems from incorrect assessments and an incomplete understanding of the defensive and offensive capabilities of the Islamic Republic,” the official said.
“Any scenario designed on the basis of surprise or controlling the scope of conflict will slip out of the control of its planners at the very early stages,” the official added.
“The maritime environment surrounding Iran is an indigenous and well-known environment and is fully under the oversight of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic,” he continued.
“The concentration and accumulation of extra-regional forces and equipment in such an environment is not a deterrent factor but rather increases vulnerability and turns them into accessible targets.”
The official said Iran’s armed forces track hostile activity before it reaches the operational stage.
“Any threat against Iran’s national security is being closely monitored, and appropriate decisions will be taken at the proper time,” he said.
“The armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran do not monitor enemy movements solely at the stage of action. Rather, the formation and early signs of any threat against the country’s national security are carefully monitored, and based on field assessments, appropriate decisions will be taken at the proper time,” he added.
After killing thousands across Iran in just days, Iran’s government is denying families the right to mourn by blocking burials and seizing bodies in its push stamp on the embers of unrest.
In Iranian and Islamic tradition, failing to bury the dead promptly—usually within 24 hours—is considered a profound violation of dignity. Yet many families say they have been deprived of dignified burial and mourning rituals.
The moves appear aimed at preventing public funerals or mourning which could become flashpoints of anger and dissent.
Families of the slain say they have been prevented from holding mourning ceremonies, denied timely burials and pressured into silence—deprived of what they describe as basic human closure.
An account on X writing under a pseudonym, wrote: “I finally got online. I will never forget the moment they shot a 15-year-old boy directly in the head with a Kalashnikov … or the silence the next day when they told his mother if she cried loudly, they wouldn’t give her the body.”
Some families report being notified of deaths only after secret burials had already taken place, or not being told burial locations at all.
Another X user, living in Canada, wrote on X that the family of a slain relative was denied a funeral: “They buried him at five in the morning themselves and threatened the family that if they gathered at the grave, they would dig up the body and take it away.”
One of the most widespread accusations against the government is the use of bodies as leverage. Families report being forced to pay sums of around $5,000 or sign written commitments in exchange for the release of remains.
One such victim was Armin Jashni-Nejad, a 23-year-old petrochemical worker from Mahshahr, who was shot to death by police on January 9.
Two days later, security officials told his family the body would only be released if they agreed to say he had been killed by “thugs.”
Ultimately, Armin was buried by security forces without his family present, after they were compelled to sign a written pledge.
Bardia, who recently left Iran after witnessing the massacre of protesters in Rasht, northern Iran, told Iran International that in some cases authorities demanded deposits as high as 30 billion rials (over $20,000) from families to prevent public funerals.
For most families living through the country's dire economic straits, the sums are impossible.
Further accounts by social media users citing local eyewitnesses describe families burying victims in private homes or gardens to prevent authorities from seizing the bodies.
These reports could not be immediately confirmed by Iran International.
Death toll
Iranian authorities have acknowledged only a fraction of the deaths but assert that of approximately 3,100 deaths, over 2,400 -- both ordinary citizens and security forces -- were caused by “terrorists”.
Iran International has reported at least 36,500 deaths, having reviewed "classified documents, field reports, and accounts from medical staff, witnesses, and victims’ families."
Witnesses report that many victims were shot in the head or chest. Gunshot wounds to the genital area have also reportedly been reported, which some observers say were inflicted deliberately.
At the same time, state television has aired the televised interrogations of ordinary citizens, portraying them as “misled,” “ignorant," or agents of foreign governments.
These broadcasts appear designed to reframe the killings as acts of national defense rather than the violent suppression of mass protests.
A flood of evidence
In the immediate aftermath of the deadliest mass killings, on January 8 and 9, near-total internet shutdowns and severe restrictions on phone communications obscured the scale of the carnage.
Several days later, the first videos began to emerge: black body bags piled into trailers, hundreds of corpses stacked together, or bodies laid out on the ground at Kahrizak forensic medicine compound in Tehran.
In these videos, families of the missing are forced to search among blood-soaked bodies—some partially unclothed—in the hope of finding their loved ones.
Increased access to the internet and social media—largely through the Psiphon conduit—has since enabled a wave of new testimonies and footage to surface. The images are harrowing.
In several of the bodies shown, signs of medical intervention are visible alongside fatal gunshot wounds to the forehead or chest, raising the possibility that some victims were shot after being taken to the hospital.
One of the most searing videos, published on Thursday, documents twelve minutes of a father searching among corpses on the outside pavement of the Kahrizak morgue.
Past the sea of bodies and families collapsing into wails after finding slain young loved ones, he weeps and groans uncontrollably.
"Death to Khamenei," the father whimpers again and again. He repeatedly calls out his son’s name throughout: “Sepehr, daddy’s Sepehr, where are you?”
The video ends with no sign that father and son were reunited.
Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem on Monday said the group considers threats by US President Donald Trump against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to be a threat against Hezbollah itself.
“Hezbollah is concerned with confronting Trump’s threat against Khamenei and considers it a threat against itself, and it has full authority to take whatever it deems appropriate to confront it,” Qassem said.
Qassem described Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as the group’s supreme Islamic authority.
Referring to nationwide protests in Iran, Qassem accused the Islamic Republic's adversaries of seeking to undermine the country from within through economic pressure and by, he said, inserting “saboteurs” into demonstrations.
The United Arab Emirates said it would not allow its airspace, territory or territorial waters to be used for any hostile military action against Iran.
“The UAE confirms its commitment to not allowing its airspace, land or waters to be used in any hostile military actions against Iran,” Afra Al Hameli, director of strategic communications at the UAE foreign ministry, said in a post on X.
She added that the UAE would not provide any logistical support for such actions and said Abu Dhabi believed dialogue, de-escalation and respect for international law were the best way to address regional crises.
