DUBAI — Iran’s efforts to quell a wave of anti-government protests have been complicated by Donald Trump’s threat to intervene on their side, a warning firmly underlined by the subsequent US capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, officials and insiders said on Monday.

A day before US special forces seized Maduro and his wife on January 3 and whisked them off to New York, the US president warned in a social media post that if Iran’s leadership killed protesters who have taken to the streets since December 28, the US “will come to their rescue.” At least 17 people have died so far.

Tehran’s options have been limited by Trump’s threats and a long-running economic crisis that deepened after Israel, joined by the US, launched strikes on the Islamic Republic in June in a 12-day war that pummeled several of Iran’s nuclear sites.

“These twin pressures have narrowed Tehran’s room for maneuver, leaving leaders caught between public anger on the streets and hardening demands and threats from Washington, with few viable options and high risks on every path,” one Iranian official told Reuters.

The view was echoed by two other officials and a former Iranian official who remains close to Iran’s decision makers. All of them asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the situation.

A second official said that, after Us action in Venezuela, some of the authorities feared Iran could be “the next victim of Trump’s aggressive foreign policy.”

Iran’s economy has been hammered by years of US sanctions, but its rial has been in freefall since last year’s Israeli-US strikes that mainly targeted nuclear sites, where the West says Tehran has been working on nuclear arms. Iran denies this.

The protests that erupted in Tehran and which have spread to some cities in western and southern Iran do not match the scale of unrest that swept the nation in 2022-23 over the death of

© The Times of Israel