Last year, Iran executed an average of about six people every day — more than 2,000 in all. It undermines democracy by preventing candidates who do not demonstrate fealty to the regime from appearing on election ballots. It censors criticism. It discriminates against religious minorities, prohibiting Baha’is from enrolling in universities and at times refusing to allow Sunni Muslims to build mosques.
Misogyny is official government policy. In court, women’s testimony receives less weight than men’s. Polygamy is legal, and husbands can bar their wives from holding jobs or traveling abroad. Women are often harassed for not wearing a hijab, and they cannot sing alone in public or attend many men’s sporting events. Violence against women often goes unpunished. Discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. people is also policy. Same-sex sexual activity is illegal, and sentences include flogging and even death.
Iran’s government has impoverished its own people. The government’s focus on warmongering has damaged the economy and led other countries to exclude it from global trade. Iran’s leaders, instead of investing in their own people, have used oil revenue to pursue a nuclear program, support terrorism and bankroll the leaders’ own lifestyles. So little money has flowed into domestic investment that Tehran has come close to running out of water.
Globally, Ayatollah Khamenei’s government has spread mayhem and death. It has sent thousands of so-called suicide drones to Russia, enabling Vladimir Putin to kill more Ukrainians. It was the most important ally of President Bashar al-Assad’s horrific regime in Syria, making possible his vast torture network. Iran’s biggest foreign policy project since the 1979 revolution has been its attempts to destroy Israel, mostly through the terrorist proxies of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Those groups have killed not only Israelis but civilians from dozens of countries, including Argentina, Bulgaria, Ethiopia, France, Thailand and the United States. Hezbollah has helped turn Lebanon into a failed state.
Israel has debilitated Hamas and Hezbollah since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. During a 12-day war last year, Israel decimated Iran’s aerial defenses and assassinated the leaders of its rogue nuclear program, while shooting down hundreds of Iran’s missiles aimed at Israel. Mr. Trump then ordered an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, setting back the leaders’ apparent ambitions for a nuclear weapon.
Tough new economic sanctions, imposed last year by the United States, Canada, Britain and the United Nations because of the nuclear program, have further hurt Iran’s economy.
Protests began on Dec. 28, among merchants angered that Iran’s currency lost more than 80 percent of its market value last year and that the annual inflation rate exceeded 40 percent. The protests have since become more political and spread to all 31 provinces. Some of them are huge, based on videos. Demonstrators have chanted “Death to the dictator,” referring to the Ayatollah Khamenei. Many Iranians are furious that their government has prioritized foreign adventurism over domestic prosperity. One popular chant is: “No to Gaza. No to Lebanon. My life only for Iran.”
Trump administration should build on the Biden administration’s efforts in 2022 and 2023 to smuggle Starlink kits into Iran, allowing protesters to communicate using satellites when Iran’s government largely shuts down the internet, as it has in recent days. The United States should also take steps to keep those kits functioning in the face of the Khamenei government’s attempts to block them, among other ways to help the protesters.
The world can also extend the sanctions it has imposed on Iran. The Trump administration this week announced new tariffs on any countries that do business with Iran, and other democracies should impose their own economic penalties. Europe can play a vital role. European leaders have sometimes been naïve about the nature of Iran’s government, and they should step up now.
On Jan. 2, five days after the protesters began, Mr. Trump said that the United States was “locked and loaded” and would “come to their rescue” if the regime used violence against them. If Mr. Trump is serious about this threat, we urge him to move much more judiciously than he typically does. He should seek approval from Congress before any military operation. He should make clear its limitations and goals. How will it weaken the regime? How will it avoid spiraling into an open-ending failure? And he should ensure the U.S. military is not stretched too thin by his buildup of forces around Venezuela. He will put Americans in the region at risk if he attacks Iran without adequate preparation and resources.