Ever since the latest wave of anti-government protests swept Iran at the start of the year, US President Donald Trump has deliberately given the impression that he is prepared to intervene militarily to end the bloodshed.
The Iranian regime has certainly been under no illusions about the possibility of the US launching a fresh round of military strikes against it after the Trump administration’s controversial intervention in Venezuela, which resulted in the seizure of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.
There has also been a marked increase in global tensions over Trump’s threat to seize control of Greenland, the Arctic country that has become the latest focus of the great-power rivalry among the US, Russia and China.
In this context, the possibility that Trump may be prepared to renew hostilities against Tehran has been viewed with the utmost seriousness by Iran’s leaders as they have struggled to contain the latest wave of nationwide protests, which broke out in late December after a sudden 40% plunge in the value of the rial, the country's currency.
Mossad hand?
At the time, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent out a bold tweet saying: 'Happy New Year to Iranians and Mossad agents beside them." Protests then took a violent turn, with unconfirmed numbers of killed between protesters, or "rioters" as Iran's government calls them and security officers that range from hundreds to the thousands.
For his part, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah, shifted from advocating civil disobedience to calling for a direct takeover of city centres, drawing accusations of ‘terrorism’ from Iran. And Trump seemed to echo the sentiment when he told Iranians to "keep protesting" after they subsided in the early new year, promising "help was on the way".
