A day before the U.S. military captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, President Donald Trump threatened Iran’s regime as protests there continued amid deteriorating economic conditions.
Given the stunning success of the weekend raid in South America and the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June, speculation has grown that Trump may turn his sights back to the Middle East.
On Friday, he warned on social media that if Iran kills peaceful protesters, “the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.” And days before that, Trump threatened to “knock the hell out of” Iran if it tried to rebuild its nuclear program or expand its ballistic missile program.
On Saturday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested the Venezuela operation was a warning to other U.S. adversaries who doubt Trump.
“When he tells you that he’s going to do something, when he tells you he’s going to address a problem, he means it,” he told reporters.
Protests among shopkeepers in Tehran began late last month after Iran’s currency plummeted further, raising costs for merchants selling imported goods. Others joined in, prompting the regime to crack down, with some deaths reported.
Iran in crisis
The unrest comes as multiple crises have whipsawed the economy. The currency has lost 60% of its value since June, when Iran and Israel fought a 12-day war that was capped by the U.S. bombing.
That has worsened soaring inflation, which hit 64% for food products in October, according to the World Bank.
At the same time, Iran has been plagued by chronic energy shortages. Despite vast oil and gas reserves, fuel and electricity must be rationed due to under-investment, outdated infrastructure, subsidies, corruption, and sanctions.
That means rolling blackouts are imposed during the summer, when the need for air conditioning stokes electricity demand. At the same time, natural gas supplies for winter heating also suffer disruptions.
The energy crunch has prompted Iran to look toward solar energy, but the weak currency also means importing the necessary technology is extra expensive.
Meanwhile, Iran is suffering its worst drought in at least 40 years. As recently as a month ago, the main reservoirs supplying Tehran were only about 11% full. The situation was so dire that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian even suggested people may need to evacuate the capital.
While some rain has since fallen, it hasn’t improved the overall situation much, and precipitation is just 5% of what’s considered a normal autumn. Service has reportedly been interrupted in some Tehran neighborhoods.
Water carries political risks too, as previous shortages have sparked some protests in the past, and any curbs to agricultural users could worsen food inflation even further.
Like the energy shortage, the water crisis has several factors, including decades of mismanagement and over-extraction, leaky pipes, corruption, and climate change.
With multiple calamities converging at once for Iran, while Trump’s appetite for foreign intervention is expanding beyond Venezuela, observers see heightened risks for the Islamic Republic. Maduro is also a close ally of Iran, which has condemned his capture and arrest by the U.S.
“Whether Trump becomes enamored with ‘surgical’ regime change, or gives [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu a U.S. imprimatur for similar actions, it’s hard not to see how this gives momentum for the many actors pushing for renewed war with Iran,” Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, told Al Jazeera.