When President Donald Trump promised Iranian protesters that “help is on its way,” he probably didn’t anticipate how those words would trap him. Human rights groups are estimating the number of Iranian protesters killed as ranging from “more than 2,600 people” to “more than 3,400 people” and CBS News is reporting the death toll as “at least 12,000, and possibly as many as 20,000 people.” Trump faces a choice that may define his second term: strike Iran militarily, pursue a hasty nuclear deal, or watch as the regime he threatened to overthrow stabilizes itself through mass violence.

The cold arithmetic of politics suggests none of these options end well. The real cost may be measured in something less tangible: the credibility of American promises to people who risk everything. We may never know whether Trump’s words emboldened these particular protesters but dissidents who rise up in the next upheaval—whether in Iran or elsewhere—will remember that as makeshift morgues were overflowing in Iran, the American assistance that had been promised did not arrive.

And the world is watching.

From my years covering the aftermath of America’s Iraq intervention, I have learned that the space between bold declarations and workable strategy is often filled with the lives of people we claim to want to save. Trump’s rhetoric has raised expectations while simultaneously narrowing his own room for maneuver. The regime in Tehran, meanwhile, has called his bluff by doing exactly what he warned them not to do—and doing it with staggering brutality.

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