It's looking very likely that sometime in the next 72 hours, the U.S. will bomb a variety of targets in Iran. The regime won't even blink. They will continue to try to stop a revolution that is gaining strength every day despite the nauseating body count.
This video appears to show “at least 262 instances of gunfire and sustained automatic shooting” being fired on protesters in Tehran.
In this 6 minutes video (an edited version) from #Tehran, at least 262 instances of gunfire and sustained automatic shooting can be heard.
— Farzad Seifikaran (@FSeifikaran) January 13, 2026
At 03:44, a person who appears to have been shot is dragged into a police station.#IranProtests https://t.co/dgTctFdFrM
The death toll is in the thousands. We may never know how many the regime has slaughtered because Iran is now almost completely cut off from the outside world. Just a trickle of information is getting through the government information blockade.
Yes, this is a revolution; unplanned, disorganized, haphazard, and nearly leaderless. This is a revolution of enraged people who are attacking the police and murderous Shi'ite militias who the government of Iran has hired to murder protesters with little thought to their own safety.
Donald Trump should realize that American intervention at this point would be counterproductive. The protesters in the streets have seen with their own eyes what U.S.-led regime change leads to in Iraq and Afghanistan. Any actions by the United States, even if it's just to rap Khamenei's knuckles in an attempt to get him to back off the killing, would cause the protests to lose steam and legitimacy in the eyes of many fence-sitters.
There are no good options.
There is one thing, however, that might unify the country temporarily, but in the wrong way: a foreign attack. Iran’s leaders know that U.S. or Israeli strikes would shift ordinary citizens’ focus away from protesting. Antigovernment protests were gaining momentum last June, when the 12-day war broke out. But as Israeli and U.S. bombs fell, ordinary citizens had to go into hiding, giving Tehran a six-month reprieve from popular discontent. Trump’s threats do not seem to be making the regime more reluctant to brutalize protesters, and in recent days, commanders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have spoken about launching preemptive strikes to tempt the United States and Israel into retaliating. In a Sunday interview on state television, even the usually relatively temperate Pezeshkian’s rhetoric became more hard-line: he blasted the protesters as “rioters” and “terrorist elements,” echoing Khamenei.
Immune to international pressure, Iran is cornered. The people aren't angry enough to revolt because women have to wear hijabs, free speech is absent, or other freedoms are curtailed or non-existent.
The people are angry enough to face bullets to overthrow the regime because the economy is flat on its back with no plan from the government to resurrect it.
Its currency is worthless, shops are closed because no one can buy anything, and the underground economy that runs on dollars has folded. Inflation is running over 50%, the rial has lost 90% of its value since the end of August, and the unemployment rate for those 18-25 is well over 50%.
The Iranian people woke up two weeks ago and suddenly realized their country was collapsing.
The slaughter can't continue. The most likely end to the crackdown is a coup by those in the Revolutionary Guards with the most to lose.
Exactly when and how Iran’s current regime will fall is unclear. Khamenei, who is 86, could cling to power until he is incapacitated or dies. Midlevel Revolutionary Guards leaders, seeking to preserve their organization’s economic clout, may step in and impose military rule. Protesters could overwhelm local and national security forces, forcing pro-regime religious leaders and politicians to flee. But irrespective of their feelings about their regime, Iranians in the country have no desire for U.S.-led regime change.
Meanwhile, how many more protesters is this crumbling regime going to kill on its way out?
The last spasms of brutality and murder will be long remembered in this ancient land, one of the first where human civilization thrived. Iran's ordeal may actually be just beginning, as the long, painful process of undoing the damage caused by this 13th-century medieval regime, transported into the 21st century, begins to take shape.
