Trump threatens to hit Iran 'very hard' if protest attacks continue

Donald Trump has threatened to hit Iran 'very hard' if authorities continue their harsh crackdown on protests that have entered a second week.

At least 20 people, including one member of Iran's security forces, have been killed following protests that have spread across the country from the capital, Tehran as the country's economy stutters to a halt.

As of this morning, demonstrations are said to have taken place in over 220 towns and cities in 26 of Iran's 31 provinces - resulting in the arrests of almost 1,000 people.

Last night, Trump said he would take action if any more protesters died. 

Speaking aboard Air Force One, he said without elaborating: 'We're watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they're going to get hit very hard by the United States.'

The threat appears to have spooked Iran's dictatorial leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who is said to have a back-up plan to flee to Moscow if his security forces fail to suppress the ever-growing protests. 

The Times reported that the 86-year-old autocrat is planning on fleeing with up to 20 aides and members of his family, should his army and security forces desert, defect or fail to quell the demonstrations. 

An intelligence source told the newspaper: 'The "plan B" is for Khamenei and his very close circle of associates and family, including his son and nominated heir apparent, Mojtaba.'

They added that Khamenei has already laid the groundwork needed to escape the country, which included 'gathering assets, properties abroad and cash to facilitate their safe passage'.

Khamenei is still reeling from the 12-day war launched by Israel in June that saw the United States bomb nuclear sites in Iran. 

Economic pressure, which has intensified since September when the United Nations reimposed sanctions on the country over its atomic program, has put Iran's rial currency into a free fall, now trading at some 1.4 million to $1.

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Meanwhile, Iran's self-described 'Axis of Resistance' - a coalition of countries and militant groups backed by Tehran - has been decimated in the years since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.

The collapse of the rial has led to a widening economic crisis in Iran. Prices are up on meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table. The nation has been struggling with an annual inflation rate of some 40 per cent.

In December, Iran introduced a new pricing tier for its nationally subsidised gasoline, raising the price of some of the world's cheapest gas and further pressuring the population. 

Tehran may seek steeper price increases in the future, as the government now will review prices every three months.

The protests began first with merchants in Tehran before spreading. While initially focused on economic issues, the demonstrations soon saw protesters chanting anti-government statements as well. 

Anger has been simmering over the years, particularly after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody that triggered nationwide demonstrations.

Iran's 'Axis of Resistance,' which grew in prominence in the years after the 2003 US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is reeling.

Israel has crushed Hamas in the devastating war in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, has seen its top leadership killed by Israel and has been struggling since. 

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A lightning offensive in December 2024 overthrew Iran's longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria, President Bashar Assad, after years of war there. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels also have been pounded by Israeli and American airstrikes.

China meanwhile has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, but hasn't provided overt military support. Neither has Russia, which has relied on Iranian drones in its war on Ukraine.

Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials have increasingly threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. 

Iran had been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels prior to the US attack in June, making it the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.

Tehran also increasingly cut back its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, as tensions increased over its nuclear program in recent years. The IAEA's director-general has warned Iran could build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program.

US intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has 'undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so'.

Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. 

However, there have been no significant talks in the months since the June war.

Decades ago, Iran was one of the United States' top allies in the Mideast under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlav.

He purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighbouring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah's rule. 

But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. 

Then came the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran's theocratic government.

Later that year, university students overran the US Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah's extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the US severed.

During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the US backed Saddam Hussein. 

During that conflict, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea as part of the so-called 'Tanker War,' and later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the US military said it mistook for a warplane.

Iran and the US have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since, and relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran greatly limit its program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. 

But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Middle East that intensified after Hamas' October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.