President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that Iranians want to protest the regime but are not armed to withstand a violent crackdown.
The Daily Signal’s White House correspondent, Elizabeth Mitchell, asked Trump, “You said recently that if Iran—Iranians were armed, they could take over their regime. Do you plan to arm them soon?”
“Well, I don’t want to say that, but, yeah, I mean, people say why aren’t they protesting. They want to protest, but they don’t have any guns,” he told her.
“They want to protest so badly, but they don’t have weapons,” Trump said.
Yesterday, the Iranian regime executed three men—Mehdi Rassouli, Mohammad Reza Miri, and Ebrahim Dolatabadi—for their participation in protests in December 2025. Another three were killed over the weekend: Yaghoub Karimpour and Nasser Bakarzadeh for cooperating with Israel, and Mehrab Abdollahzade for the 2022 uprising against the regime, the Washington Examiner reported, citing Iranian state media and the Kurdistan Human Rights Network.
“So, you can have 200,000 people protesting and have five or six sick people with guns. And when they start shooting them right between the eyes and you see a guy fall and another one fall and you have no guns, very few people would be able to stand there and do it,” Trump continued.
Trump reminded the press that the Iranian regime killed 42,000 unarmed protesters last month alone. He explained that there were roughly 250,000 people in a crowd, and the regime executed protesters on the ground using just four or five snipers hiding in buildings above.
The president described a similar protest over a year ago. “They had 200,000 women protesting a year ago, and everyone thought that was the end of Iran. And then, all of a sudden, a woman dropped dead with a bullet right there, always right there,” he said, pointing to his forehead between his eyes, insinuating it was an execution.
“Then another woman dropped, and then the word started to spread, and then there was panic, and then they ran. And, you know, so I don’t want that to happen,” he insisted.
In a Feb. 28 video message announcing Operation Epic Fury, Trump told Iranians, “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations.”
The United States is continuing Operation Project Freedom—the effort to regain control of the strait by ensuring commercial vessels have safe passage. However, the ceasefire with Iran is still in place.
