US President Donald Trump has made several statements about intervening in Iran, about being “locked and loaded,” and about preventing the regime from slaughtering its own people. But for much of last week, the second week of protests, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been doing exactly that, killing not just a few protesters, but hundreds day after day – and Trump has not made any moves.
This raises the question: when looking at what Washington will or won’t do in Iran, is the world observing TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) – the US president, who in early 2025 threatened tariffs numerous times against various countries and threatened a variety of global military interventions, only to blink and pull back whenever the situation got too heated?
Or is the world looking at Venezuela Trump – an unbound US president who is willing to stun the world by abducting a foreign head of state, killing up to 80 foreign soldiers to do so and an even larger number of drug smugglers at sea, publicly admitting to using cyber weapons to black out all of Caracas (despite years during which American cyber policy remained classified), and then talking openly about “running” that country?
Part of the difficulty in knowing the answer is Trump’s chronic unpredictability.
There are times when his future actions can be discerned based on patterns of his past conduct, and then there are times when he seems to spontaneously shock the world. Regarding his past conduct with Iran, there are plenty of contradictory signals.
Trump's history with Iran
In his first term, Trump spent three years saber-rattling with Iran but almost only used economic sanctions and public maximum pressure diplomacy to try to get Tehran to bend to his will. This suddenly changed on January 3, 2020, when he eliminated Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Chief Qasem Soleimani, probably the second most powerful man in Iran at the time.
It seemed completely out of nowhere and super risky for a US president who had railed against getting involved in foreign forever wars.
But there was a strategy and approach to it. It came after Soleimani had ordered an attack on a US base, which killed a US contractor a few days earlier, and after he had ordered rioting near a US embassy, which was publicly and loudly embarrassing for Trump.
But Trump exited that episode fast.
Iran did attack multiple US bases, wounding dozens of American soldiers, but Trump declared the confrontation over when no US soldiers were killed.
Likewise, Trump seemed inclined to negotiate with Khamenei in his second term and probably would not have used force against the regime if not for an Israeli decision to attack the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Even then, Trump waited over a week until striking the Fordow nuclear facility and two other facilities, and then again moved to wind up the intervention rapidly.
Later, Iran attacked and damaged expensive US military machinery at a base in Qatar, but no US soldiers were killed, and Trump called an end to the June 2025 Iran war. Since then, for six months, Khamenei has utterly ignored Trump’s multiple requests to talk and reach a new deal.
And so far, Trump’s threats have looked like a throwback to his TACO days.
But “Fordow Trump,” as opposed to TACO Trump or Venezuela Trump, is maybe most instructive for estimating what he may do.
The US president hesitated, waited, and calculated, and only when he believed he could get a big win taking on little risk (Israeli aircraft had already eliminated 80% of Iranian air defense and all of the good ones) did he let the jackhammer fall.
That will most likely be the Trump approach here as well, to the extent that anything is predictable.
Most Israeli and US intelligence officials do not yet think that the regime is near collapse.
The crowds are too small, and there are no visible cracks among the elites or any Iranian general who is ready to switch sides to join the protesters, bringing his guns along with him. If this does not change, Trump will probably not intervene.
But this could change. If the crowds reach large and sustained numbers, if some elites – or an Iranian general – begin to consider switching sides with the promise of US backing (and if there are clandestine contacts going on right now to facilitate this), and if the regime is already reeling, Trump may be quite serious about delivering some devastating blows to Khamenei and the regime.
This is a much smaller change in US policy than some might assume based on Trump’s threats.
But given that prior US administrations probably would not have even considered intervention in such a case, it is still a potentially significant change.