How Trumps threats and regimes profound weakness are stopping Iran from brutally cracking down on protesters

Recent threats by President Trump and the fear of nationwide instability are keeping Iran’s hardline Islamic rulers from repeating their past pattern of brutally cracking down on anti-regime protests, experts tell The Post.With demonstrators taking to the streets once again Wednesday over Iran’s failing economy, the Islamic Republic has refrained from the usual wide-scale repression, noted Brian Carter of the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project.The lack of government-sanctioned violence is a notable departure from the fall of 2022, when human rights groups said more than 500 Iranians were killed during protests of the murder of Mahsa Amini in police custody.The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported Thursday that the death toll from the current protests had reached at least 38, with more than 2,200 arrested.The group relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting.Tehran officials claim that the regime has only gone after violent “rioters” rather than peaceful demonstrators.“It’s something they haven’t done before,” Carter said of Tehran’s choice of words.

“We’re seeing them weaponize the term ‘rioters.'”Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted that Iranian leaders had admitted that the protesters had legitimate grievances, with Tehran calling on the nation to come together rather than be divided.“This is a different track for the regime.In previous situations it was far more uncompromising,” Takeyh wrote in a briefing.

Also playing on the mullahs’ minds are comments by both President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both of whom bombarded Iran’s nuclear facilities this past June.If Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Jan.2, adding that America was “locked and loaded and ready to go,�...