President Donald Trump is expected to help Iranians demonstrating across the country against the regime, sources familiar with discussions held in recent days told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
The sources said Trump has essentially decided to assist the demonstrators, but how or when to do so has not been decided.
In recent days, talks have been taking place in Washington on assisting the protesters, with different options on the table.
"The spectrum ranges from a military option, namely strikes against regime targets, to cyber support against the regime, to providing Starlink systems to help protesters," one source told The Post. "While the Trump administration does not believe that the Iranian regime is collapsing, it definitely sees problems and cracks that did not exist a week ago."
The Trump administration intensified efforts following images that emerged from Iranian protests in recent days. Until that point, the administration did not believe the protests had crossed a threshold that would cause the regime to panic.
However, the internet shutdown, the large number of protesters, and harsh repression measures — which have reportedly led to at least 2,000 deaths — have prompted senior administration officials to seriously consider helping the demonstrators.
The Jerusalem newspaper also reported that after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a small group of ministers and senior security officials to discuss the situation in Iran on Sunday, Israel made several decisions on the issue.
These included not intervening publicly in Iran, letting the U.S. lead any assistance measures for protesters, and preparing for the possibility that Tehran may decide to launch ballistic missiles at Israel to divert attention from the demonstrations.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.