Trump faces competing pressures: hawkish allies in Washington are urging him to act decisively against an Iranian government they describe as vulnerable, while private signals from Tehran are giving his administration cover to pause — for now. The president made clear Sunday that military action remained on the table even if diplomacy proceeds.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump held off on threatened military action against Iran on Monday as the White House said it was exploring private diplomatic overtures from Tehran, even as his administration announced 25% tariffs on countries doing business with the Islamic Republic. Iranian security forces have killed more than 600 protesters and arrested thousands in a crackdown on antigovernment demonstrations that Trump has repeatedly said crosses a red line.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday that Iran’s private communications to the administration differ from what the government says publicly. “What you’re hearing publicly from the Iranian regime is quite different from the messages the administration is receiving privately, and I think the president has an interest in exploring those messages,” Leavitt said. “However, with that said, the president has shown he’s unafraid to use military options if and when he deems necessary, and nobody knows that better than Iran.”
Leavitt confirmed that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff will be a key player in engaging Tehran.
Hours after Leavitt’s remarks, Trump announced on social media the immediate 25% tariffs — his first concrete action penalizing Iran for the crackdown. China, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Brazil and Russia are among economies that conduct business with Tehran. The White House offered no further comment on the tariff announcement.
Options take shape
Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and key National Security Council officials began meeting Friday to develop a “suite of options,” from a diplomatic approach to military strikes, to present to Trump in the coming days, according to a U.S. official familiar with the internal deliberations who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Trump told reporters Sunday evening that a “meeting is being set up” with Iranian officials but cautioned that “we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting.” He added: “We’re watching the situation very carefully.”
Iran’s parliamentary speaker warned in response that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if Washington uses force to protect demonstrators.
Protests and their limits
The demonstrations are the largest Iran has seen in years. They were initially spurred by the collapse of the Iranian currency but have expanded into a broader challenge to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rule, according to the Associated Press.
Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser who is now a professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University, said Tehran’s internet blackout is complicating the protests’ ability to sustain themselves. “It makes it very difficult for news from one city or pictures from one city to incense or motivate action in another city,” Nasr said. “The protests are leaderless, they’re organization-less. They are actually genuine eruptions of popular anger. And without leadership and direction and organization, such protests, not just in Iran, everywhere in the world — it’s very difficult for them to sustain themselves.”
Iranian authorities have suppressed previous rounds of mass protest, including the 2009 “Green Movement” following a disputed presidential election and the 2022 “woman, life, freedom” demonstrations that erupted after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in the custody of the state’s morality police.
Allies push for action
Some of Trump’s hawkish allies are pressing him not to let the moment pass. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on social media Monday that Trump has an opportunity to demonstrate he is serious about enforcing the red lines he has drawn. Graham drew a direct comparison to former President Barack Obama, who in 2012 set a red line over Syria’s use of chemical weapons but did not follow through with military action after President Bashar Assad crossed it the following year.
“It is not enough to say we stand with the people of Iran,” Graham said. “The only right answer here is that we act decisively to protect protesters in the street — and that we’re not Obama — proving to them we will not tolerate their slaughter without action.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a close Trump ally, said on social media that “the goal of every Western leader should be to destroy the Iranian dictatorship at this moment of its vulnerability.”
Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank, said the president’s credibility is eroding with each statement unaccompanied by action. “There is a fast-diminishing value to official statements by the president promising to hold the regime accountable, but then staying on the sidelines,” Ben Taleblu said. He added that Trump’s preference for unpredictability “should not bleed into a policy of locking in or bailing out an anti-American regime which is on the ropes at home and has a bounty on the president’s head abroad.”
A crowded foreign policy moment
Trump is managing several simultaneous foreign policy crises. It has been just over a week since the U.S. military conducted a raid to arrest Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and remove him from power, and the U.S. continues to maintain an unusually large military presence in the Caribbean Sea. Trump is also pressing Israel and Hamas toward a second phase of a Gaza peace agreement while working to broker an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Advocates urging strong action against Iran argue that the current protests offer a chance to further weaken the government that has ruled the country since the 1979 Islamic revolution — and that the window could close.