Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has defiantly stated that the Islamic Republic will not yield to widespread domestic protests or to threats from former U.S. President Donald Trump. The crisis, now entering its third week, was ignited by the catastrophic collapse of the Iranian national currency.
A Defiant Stance from Tehran
In a televised address on January 10, 2026, Khamenei dismissed the significance of the ongoing unrest, which has spread to most major Iranian cities. He characterized the protesters as "vandals" whose actions were primarily intended to curry favor with the United States. "The Islamic Republic will not back down in the face of vandals," he declared.
Khamenei also took direct aim at Donald Trump, who had earlier issued a warning to the Iranian regime. "Trump should know that world tyrants were brought down at the peak of their arrogance," Khamenei said. "He, too, will be brought down." He suggested the former American president should focus on domestic issues within the United States instead.
Trump's Warning and U.S. Posture
The verbal exchange was triggered by comments from Donald Trump on Friday. While meeting with U.S. oil executives, Trump warned the Iranian leadership, "you better not start shooting" at the demonstrators, "because we’ll start shooting, too." He clarified there would be no American "boots on the ground," but threatened severe retaliation if the regime began killing protesters.
"If they start killing people like they have in the past, we’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts," Trump stated. He also claimed, based on an unverified video from Azerbaijan, that the city of Mashhad was under protester control—an assertion lacking independent confirmation. The U.S. State Department has amplified its support on Farsi-language social media, though the impact is unclear due to a near-total communications blackout inside Iran.
Nationwide Blackout and Growing Protests
The situation on the ground remains opaque due to a severe government-imposed information blockade. According to the global internet monitor NetBlocks and the Iran-focused group Filterbaan, authorities have enacted a nationwide shutdown of internet and phone services. This has blocked Iranian news agency sites and severely limited the flow of information to the outside world.
Despite the blackout, scattered reports indicate that protests continued in force on Friday. What began as demonstrations against a crippled economy and the currency's freefall has rapidly evolved into a broader challenge to Iran's clerical establishment. The scale of the unrest has prompted several major airlines in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar to cancel flights to Iranian cities.
The U.S. capacity to support digital communication within Iran has also been hampered. Funding for a federal program designed to provide Iranians with tools to bypass state censorship was canceled last year by the Trump administration, leaving fewer avenues for information to escape the regime's grip as the crackdown intensifies.
