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Donald Trump has told Iranians to keep protesting and said help was on the way, in the clearest sign yet that the US president may be preparing for military action against Tehran.
“Iranian Patriots, keep protesting – take over your institutions!!! … help is on its way,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday. He added that he had cancelled all meetings with Iranian officials until the “senseless killing” of protesters stopped.
His remarks suggest Iran’s offer to reopen talks on its nuclear programme has been rejected by Trump in the face of increasingly credible reports that as many as 2,000 Iranians had been killed in the protests. Iranian officials had earlier admitted to 600 deaths.
Trump’s call to keep protesting comes a day after demonstrations had apparently subsided owing to the severity of the crackdown. Trump is still conferring with officials about the action he could take. But his words imply he will not be content with further economic pressure.
The current assessment of European diplomats is that the regime is very determined to cling on to power and has the internal unity and resolve to do so. They believe it would take a very sustained US bombing campaign for that alignment of forces to change.
Trump’s new declaration of support may bolster the demonstrations even as it remains unclear if a show of force by the US can compel the Iranian regime to back down. The death toll from the crackdown on the protests has risen into the thousands as images of Iranian morgues filled with the bodies of demonstrators have leaked onto the internet.
In his online posts, Trump also called on Iranian protesters to “save the names of the killers and abusers” suggesting that the US could bring them to account and that they would “pay a big price”.
Trump has also vowed to target foreign backers of the Iranian government.
On Monday, he announced a 25% tariff on any country still trading with Iran, a move that led China, Iran’s largest export partner, to threaten retaliation.
Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said Beijing would “take all necessary measures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests” after Trump threatened to ramp up his global trade war.
Other major trading partners include Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. A Russian foreign ministry spokesperson characterised US pressure on Iran by saying that “external forces hostile to Iran are trying to use the growing public tension to destabilise and destroy the Iranian state”.
The US president, who is reviewing a range of military options against the Iranian regime, said the new tariffs would be “effective immediately”, without providing further details about whether there would be any exemptions, including for countries that trade only in humanitarian goods such as medicines. More than 140 countries still trade with Iran, according to the World Bank, but sometimes only in small amounts.
China is by far Iran’s biggest trading partner, buying 77% of its oil exports in 2024, according to the data company Kpler. It recently ended a tariff war with Trump.
Liu wrote on X: “Tariff wars and trade wars have no winners, and coercion and pressure cannot solve problems. Protectionism harms the interests of all parties.”
Other countries that trade heavily with Iran are India, the United Arab Emirates, Japan and South Korea. Japan and South Korea have recently completed free trade deals with the US after a bruising confrontation over tariffs. Both countries ended up with a baseline 15% tariff, but now find themselves back in a potential crisis.
It was not immediately clear how the new measure would be applied and whether the 25% tariff on “any and all business being done with the United States of America” would be in addition to Washington’s “reciprocal” import tax rates for each country. China already faces a 45% tariff for most goods. India faces a tariff of 40% imposed for trading in Russian oil.
In a Truth Social Post on Monday, Trump said: “Effective immediately, any Country doing business with the Islamic Republic of Iran will pay a Tariff of 25% on any and all business being done with the United States of America.” Tariffs are paid by US importers of goods from those countries.
Trump’s threats coincided with Iran easing some restrictions on its people and, for the first time in days, allowing them to make calls abroad via their mobile phones on Tuesday. It did not ease restrictions on the internet or permit texting services to be restored.
Reporting restrictions and the online shutdown make it difficult to determine the death toll. The Associated Press, however, reported that the news agency of Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has been accurate in its coverage of previous unrest, had given a toll of at least 2,000 people, of whom 135 were government-affiliated.
The UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, has announced sectoral sanctions on Iran covering finance, energy transport and software. She condemned the “horrendous and brutal killing” of peaceful protesters, saying Britain had summoned the Iranian ambassador to underline the gravity of the situation.
She described the Iranian narrative that the killings were the responsibility of foreign interference as lies, adding that Britain would not do anything to play into the regime’s efforts to whip up opposition to the west.
The demonstrations in Iran have evolved from complaints about dire economic hardships to defiant calls for the fall of the deeply entrenched clerical establishment. The authorities have responded with a harsh crackdown including mass arrests, internet blackouts and public warnings that participation in the demonstrations could carry the death penalty.
Trump’s national security team is expected to hold a meeting at the White House on Tuesday to discuss options for Iran but it is unclear whether the president himself will be in attendance. Options include hitting Iran’s police headquarters with cruise missiles and more targeted assassinations.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters on Monday that airstrikes were among the “many, many options” that Trump was considering but that “diplomacy is always the first option for the president”.
There is no public sign yet that Iran sees its internal crisis as so existential that it needs to change its nuclear programme to meet US demands – and gain relief from already crippling sanctions. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has been at the forefront of ministers claiming the protests were hijacked by foreign terrorist groups.
The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said on Tuesday: “I assume that we are now witnessing the final days and weeks of this regime. When a regime can only maintain power through violence, then it is effectively at its end. The population is now rising up against this regime.”
