By Jim Geraghty
Thursday, January 15, 2026
Wednesday afternoon, President Trump made an astounding
about-face from his previous stern warnings to the Iranian regime, contending
that he had been told by unnamed sources that “the killing in Iran is stopped,”
and “it’s just one of those things.”
As of this writing, the U.S. has not taken military
strikes against Iranian targets in response to the regime’s brutal crackdown on
protesters. Perhaps by the time you read this, that circumstance will have
changed.
It’s entirely possible that President Trump’s statement
Wednesday afternoon is intended as a feint or ruse, aiming to trick Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, the mullahs, and the Iranian military that no U.S. airstrikes,
covert action, or other attacks are in the works or on their way.
Last night, NewsNation reported that the Pentagon is moving the USS Abraham
Lincoln carrier strike group from the South China Sea to the U.S. Central
Command area of responsibility, which includes the Middle East. (Back on
January 8, our Noah Rothman observed this was an inconvenient time to
not have a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier group in the Persian Gulf region.)
But as of now, President Trump has dramatically reversed his stance, contending that he
had been told by unnamed sources that “the killing in Iran is stopped,” and
“it’s just one of those things”:
We have been notified, and pretty
strongly, but we’ll find out what that all means. But we’ve been told that the
killing in Iran is stopping. It’s stopped. It’s stopping and there’s no plan
for executions or execution or executions.
So I’ve been told that on good
authority. We’ll find out about it. I’m sure if it happens, we’ll all be very
upset, including you will be very upset. But that’s just gotten to me, some
information, that the killing has stopped, that the executions have stopped.
They’re not going to have an execution, which a lot of people were talking
about for the last couple of days.
Shortly thereafter, the president elaborated:
Q: Mr. President, on Iran, you
said that the killing has stopped. Who told you that the killings have stopped
there? If it’s the Irani regime—
Trump: We have been informed
by very important sources on the other side, and they’ve said the killing is
stopped and the executions won’t take place. There were supposed to be a lot of
executions today and that the executions won’t take place and we’re going to
find out. I mean, I’ll find out after this; you’ll find out.
But we’ve been told on good
authority, and I hope it’s true. Who knows? Who knows? Crazy world.
I don’t know about you, but “I hope it’s true. Who knows?
Who knows? Crazy world,” is really not what I want to hear from a commander in
chief during a foreign crisis when he has access to everything the vast and
far-reaching U.S. intelligence community can give him. The U.S. taxpayer is
spending more
than $115 billion this year so that the president doesn’t have to shrug and
say, “Who knows? Crazy world,” when trying to determine what is happening
inside a country that has been one of America’s preeminent enemies over the
past five decades:
Q: So, how do you trust them?
Trump: You’ve seen that over
the last few days. And they said people were shooting at them with guns and
they were shooting back.
Trump’s description of that clash is probably technically
true, but misleading. The Iranian regime has announced the deaths of “100 security
personnel” during the protests:
Ahmad Mousavi, head of Iran’s
Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs, was quoted by the semi-official
Tasnim news agency as saying the funerals would be held for security forces
killed in what he described as “extreme violence” during the unrest.
Mousavi labelled protesters as
“terrorist groups” and said they had attacked police and security personnel
using firearms, hunting rifles, knives and other weapons.
While it is likely that in the crowds of tens of
thousands or hundreds of thousands, at least a handful of protesters are armed
with hunting rifles, the overwhelming majority of protesters in the streets are
unarmed, and they’re getting massacred. Trump’s statement, “They said people
were shooting at them with guns, and they were shooting back,” sounds like a
ludicrously generous and morally blind characterization of the clashes from the
perspective of the mullahs.
Trump continued:
And you know, it’s one of those
things. But they told me that there’ll be no executions. And so, I hope that’s
true. We’re going to watch and see what the process is, but we were given a
very good — very good statement by people that are aware of what’s going on. No
executions, everybody is talking about a lot of executions were taking place
today. We were just told no executions. I hope that’s true.
What outside news agencies can verify is that one high-profile
protester is avoiding the hangman’s noose, for now:
In recent days, human rights groups
had expressed concerns about the fate of Erfan Soltani, a 26-year-old clothing
merchant who was arrested last week during the height of the protests,
according to Arina Moradi, a member of Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, a
Norway-based group that focuses on Iran. Moradi, citing information from
Soltani’s family, said he was abducted from his home on Jan. 8 on undisclosed
charges.
The family was told he was
scheduled to be executed Wednesday but later was told that the execution had
been “postponed,” Moradi said.
In a statement Thursday, Iran’s
judiciary media center confirmed that Soltani had been detained but said he was
facing imprisonment, rather than the death penalty, on charges that included
“propaganda activities” and “colluding” against security services.
Moradi said her group did not
believe the peril to Soltani, along with thousands of others the government
imprisoned during the protests — some as young as 15, she said — had passed.
Iran’s regime has postponed executions after pressure from foreign governments
or human rights groups, only to implement the sentences later, she said.
The Ayatollah and the mullahs postpone Soltani’s
execution for a while, and that’s all they need to do to get the U.S. to sit
this one out?
Back on January 8, President Donald Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt that regarding the Iranian
regime, “They’re doing very poorly and I have let them know that if they start
killing people, which they tend to do during their riots. They have lots of
riots. If they do it, we’re going to hit them very hard.”
Tuesday morning, the president posted on Truth Social:
Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING –
TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They
will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials
until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!!
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
A U.S. “hit” could take a variety of forms. CBS News reported, “President Trump has been briefed on a
wide array of military and covert tools that can be used against Iran that go
well beyond conventional airstrikes. Pentagon planners have also presented
cyber operation options and psychological campaigns intended to disrupt Iranian
command structures, communications and state-run media, according to the
officials.”
But the president’s comments don’t leave much wiggle room
“Hit them very hard,” They will pay a
big price,” “Help is on its way.” And now, “Who knows? Crazy world.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, last night
in an appearance on Newsmax, explicitly said that the killing of the
protesters was a “red line” from the president:
President Trump has put down a red
line that this killing of innocent civilians, which is apparently in the
thousands now, unarmed people being shot in hospitals, being shot on the
streets, being shot with their children. This has got to stop. And President
Trump is going to see to that.
(Somewhere in Moscow, Bashar al-Assad laughs bitterly as
an American president declares a “red line.”)
I cannot say with certainty that the Iranian regime will
topple in the coming year. But I can say with certainty that this current
Iranian regime will never be able to fix the country’s deepening economic
problems. Earlier this week, Jason Malsin of the Wall Street Journal
had a spectacularly reported account of how a bank collapse illuminated the
deep-rooted destructive rot running throughout the country’s economy:
Late last year, Ayandeh Bank, run
by regime cronies and saddled with nearly $5 billion in losses on a pile of bad
loans, went bust. The government folded the carcass into a state bank and
printed a massive amount of money to try to paper over all the red ink. That
buried the problem but didn’t solve it.
Instead, the failure became both a
symbol and an accelerant of an economic unraveling that ultimately triggered the protests that now pose the most significant threat to
the regime since the founding of the Islamic Republic half a century ago. The
bank’s collapse made clear that the Iranian financial system, under strain from
years of sanctions, bad lending and reliance on inflationary printed money, had
become increasingly insolvent and illiquid. Five other banks are thought to be
similarly weak. . . .
The director of bank supervision at
the Iranian central bank last year called Ayandeh “a Ponzi scheme.” For many
Iranians, it was a symbol of a system whose few resources had been diverted to
a well-connected few while they suffered.
The regime in Tehran is running out of money. And it’s
not helping when every elite in Iran can see the cracks in the foundation
widening and is trying to get every portable asset out of the country.
Bessent, last night:
We are now seeing the rats fleeing
the ship because we can see millions, tens of millions of dollars being wired
out of the country, snuck out of the country by the Iranian leadership. They
are abandoning ship. . . . What we do at Treasury is we follow the money,
whether it is through the typical banking system or through digital assets. We
are going to trace these assets and they will not be able to keep them.
You don’t move tens of millions out of a country on a
whim. You don’t fly planeloads of gold to Moscow unless you think there’s a
good chance you’re going to lose it if you keep it in the country. The people
within the regime and closest to the regime are moving their money out, risking
its seizure. You only take that risk when you’ve concluded that keeping your
money in the country is more dangerous.
Elsewhere on National Review, our Andy McCarthy writes, “Our strategy ought to be to
degrade the regime at every opportunity. This is an exquisite opportunity.”
It is indeed. Yes, it’s possible that the regime could
crack down so brutally and so extensively that it beats the people into
submission. But then the mullahs are still left with the dysfunctional economy,
the collapsing currency, and the widespread public anger over it all. (Hey, how
easily will that gold get flown back from Russia? How easily will all that
money transfer back into Iranian banks?)
And there’s little sign anyone is itching to come to the
mullahs’ rescue. Russia
is running out of money because of the costs of the war and the downstream
economic effects; they don’t have the cash to keep Iran afloat. Xi Jinping and
the Chinese regime does have cash, but so far Beijing doesn’t seem inclined to stick its neck out too
far to help the Iranians. (Would you invest much in Iran right now?)
ADDENDUM: Candace Owens is now contending that the late Charlie Kirk was a time traveler.
I hope everyone who stuck their necks out defending Owens feels
proud.
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