When demonstrations broke out in Iran on December 28, protesters had good reason to draw encouragement from what they were hearing from both Israel and the United States.
The very next day, the Mossad’s Farsi account on X/Twitter posted an unusually explicit message: “Let’s come out to the streets together. The time has come. We are with you, not just from afar and verbally. We are with you in the field as well.”
The implication was unmistakable: The Mossad has people on the ground willing and able to assist, and Israel’s support this time for the protesters’ effort to bring down the regime of the ayatollahs would not be limited to rhetoric but would extend into practical help “in the field as well.”
Four days later, US President Donald Trump issued his own post. “If Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
The implication here was even more apparent than in the Mossad post: If the Iranian government began mowing down demonstrators, as it has done in the past, the United States would respond – and quickly.
“Locked and loaded” is not an ambiguous phrase. It means preparations are complete, and weapons are ready for use.
Nearly two weeks later, however, as estimates of those killed in the demonstrations range from roughly 2,000 – a figure confirmed to Reuters by an Iranian official – to 12,000, the number reported by the opposition outlet Iran International on Tuesday, there is no public evidence of Israel assisting protesters in the field, nor any indication that the United States was, in fact, locked and loaded.
On the contrary, according to reports, the US military is still preparing military options – meaning no imminent action is operationally ready. In this case, “locked and loaded” so far appears to have been an empty phrase.
Washington still debating next steps with Iran
Instead, Washington is debating its next steps: whether to take military action or to reenter nuclear negotiations with Iran. At the same time, Israel is now emphasizing that while it supports the protests, they are an internal Iranian matter and that any overt Israeli involvement would only give Tehran additional ammunition to turn even more fiercely against the protesters, with demonstrators accused of collaborating with “foreign agents” and “Zionists.”
Paradoxically, these early expressions of US and Israeli support may have had an unintended effect: raising the protesters’ tolerance for risk based on the belief that external actors would ultimately “rescue” them. Yet the delay in “sending in the cavalry” – or in doing anything else substantive – may now be eroding that confidence.
On Tuesday, Trump seemed to be trying to buck up their resolve, urging the protesters in a Truth Social post to take over the country’s institutions, document the names of the “killers and abusers,” since they “will pay a big price,” and assuring them that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
He also said that he has canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the killing stops.
This post was timely because one recurring question is whether people will continue to pour into the streets and risk their lives if they no longer believe that the US or Israel will come to their aid, even as the regime responds with an unprecedented level of brutality.
That uncertainty has been compounded by Israel’s subsequent silence. Cabinet ministers were reportedly instructed not to comment publicly on the unrest so as not to provide Tehran with a pretext to strike Israel. That silence stands in sharp contrast to the earlier, explicit encouragement conveyed in the Mossad tweet, and it has likely created confusion among protesters about whether Israel can, in fact, be counted on.
Masih Alinejad, an exiled Iranian-American journalist and prominent women’s rights activist, voiced that frustration in an interview with KAN 11. She argued that the Israeli government has “a duty” to act, urging Israel to target Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and to help Iranians regain access to the internet.
“The time has come to take action,” she said. “Condemnations and statements are not going to take the Iranian people anywhere.”
What she is overlooking is the genuine concern in Jerusalem that if the Iranian leaders feel cornered and desperate, they may lash out with a massive attack on Israel. As such, there are those in the security establishment arguing against giving them any pretext to do so.
Even harsher language has been directed at Washington. Retired British army officer and military analyst Andrew Fox, speaking to Iran International, warned that if Trump confines American involvement to rhetoric, it would amount to “an absolute betrayal at a critical moment.”
Fox argued that Trump made promises the United States was not prepared to fulfill – at least not when the president issued his initial “locked and loaded” threats on Truth Social.
“It’s questionable that this many people would have protested had Mr. Trump not made those promises,” Fox said. “So at the moment, America potentially has blood on its hands, quite frankly.”
Why, according to this logic, would America bear such responsibility? Because, as Fox argued, many protesters might not have taken to the streets had they not assumed that the US would have their backs.
There is an even crueler irony at play. Some analysts fear that the Iranian regime’s use of massive, deadly force was driven by a desire to crush the protests before the US had time to decide whether to intervene.
And if Washington ultimately chooses diplomatic talks with Tehran over Iran’s nuclear program as an off-ramp – an option reportedly under discussion but which Trump has now dismissed until the killing stops – protesters may feel doubly deceived.
First, because they went into the streets believing that the US would stand behind them, and second, because their protests were not about the nuclear file. They erupted over economic despair and then evolved into a bid to bring down the regime itself, not to trade blood in the streets for another nuclear deal.
A nuclear agreement with the US that leaves the Iranian regime firmly in place does nothing for the Iranian people. Nor, for that matter, is it Israel’s goal either, since Jerusalem’s concerns extend well beyond uranium enrichment to include Tehran’s ballistic missile program.
The danger now is that if protesters conclude that American and Israeli promises are hollow, far fewer will take to the streets in the coming, critical days. And if this wave of unrest is crushed, there may be little faith left in US or Israeli assurances when the next round of disaffection spills over – whether next year, the year after, or the one after that.
In that sense, the most enduring outcome would not simply be the failure of this uprising. It would be the longer-term damage: a confirmation that external backing is largely performative, that no one will truly come to help, and that future resistance is therefore futile.