AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

President Trump says the United States will now impose a 25% tariff on countries that do business with Iran. The move would mean higher prices for U.S. companies that import products from China, India, Russia, Turkey and Iraq. Trump made the announcement Monday on social media, where he also wrote, quote, “WE’RE SCREWED,” unquote, if the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the tariffs in a decision expected this week.

Iran has said it’s ready for war or dialogue, after Trump said the U.S. is considering “very strong options” to intervene if Iran’s security forces kill anti-government protesters in an ongoing crackdown.

The Norway-based group Iran Human Rights says at least 648 people have been killed since protests broke out in late December, and more than 10,000 people, it’s believed, have been arrested. An Iranian official also reported today the number of dead could be as high as 2,000.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk said, in a statement read by a spokesperson today, he was horrified by the mounting violence.

JEREMY LAURENCE: We are horrified by the mounting violence directed by security forces at protesters across Iran. As reports indicate, hundreds have been killed and thousands arrested. The killing of peaceful demonstrators must stop. The labeling of protesters as terrorists to justify violence against them is unacceptable. We urge the Iranian authorities to halt immediately all forms of violence and repression against peaceful protesters and to restore full access to the internet and telecommunication services.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Jeremy Laurence, spokesperson for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

For more, we’re joined by Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins SAIS — that’s School of Advanced International Studies. His new piece for Project Syndicate is headlined “Why This Time Is Different for Iran.” Author of several books, including Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History, he’s joining us from Paris, France.

Professor Nasr, thanks so much for being with us. Can you talk about what’s happening now on the ground, what the anti-government protesters are calling for, and President Trump threatening to militarily intervene in Iran?

VALI NASR: Well, the protests in Iran started on December 28th in reaction to a drop in the currency and the dire economic situation in Iran. They have since expanded into much more anti-government, anti-regime protests demanding an end to the Islamic Republic. They have spread across the country.

But we don’t know what the status is exactly, because the government has imposed a news blackout or a blackout on the country — no internet, no communication with the outside. A lot of international flights in and out of the country have been canceled. So we don’t know what is actually happening. And also, yesterday, the government brought crowds of its own to denounce the violence of the — the claimed violence of the protesters.

But what we know is that the situation in Iran is very precarious, that the government is clamping down very brutally, that the protesters are still demanding major changes, including some demanding the end to the Islamic Republic altogether, and the country is in a state of siege.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor, we’ve heard about the toll in terms of the killings of the protesters, but the government is also claiming — and the Institute for the Study of War seems to have been backing the claims — that there have been at least 114 security force members killed. So, how peaceful are some of these protests?

VALI NASR: Well, the protests have increasingly grown more violent. First of all, even in major urban areas, there’s a lot of angry people, and there have been clashes, and there have been setting of fires. American newspapers, New York Times, etc., did report that mosques, a number of government buildings, the state television in the city of Isfahan were set ablaze. So, these are not just crowds that are in all occasions carrying placards and denouncing the government. And then, also, in some of the provinces, particularly in western Iran, there’s also a proliferation of guns. There have been ethnic violence there in the past.

So, there is a number of people who’ve been killed who are members of the security forces. And the government actually held a funeral for them today, based on some reports coming out of Iran. But the majority of those who have been killed, the overwhelming majority of those who have been killed, are the protesters. And the very fact that about a hundred security people have been killed tells you about how ferocious and intense these protests have become, and how angry the population is, and why exactly this is such a major challenge to the hold of the Islamic Republic over Iran.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And to what — could you talk about the economic situation in Iran and the impact that the U.S. sanctions, especially in the Trump period, have had on Iran?

VALI NASR: Well, the Islamic Republic has faced anger from its population for varieties of things, for its authoritarian behavior, for imposing hijab and other religious rules on the population. The population as a whole is not happy with its government. But their anger has been intensified over the past five, six years, since President Trump imposed maximum-pressure sanctions, because it has led to major scarcities in Iran’s economy. The currency has depreciated. The inflation has spiked. Just over the past year, between December '24 and December 2025, the currency lost about 84% of its value, and inflation on food products went up by about 72%. And that is squeezing the middle class. It's robbing people of their purchasing power. It’s putting enormous amount of pressure on the population, particularly the poor members of the population, lower middle class, lower class. And the economic hardship has aggravated the tensions that already existed towards the Islamic Republic.

And we saw two, three years ago that this already was a factor, when enforcement of hijab and the killing of a young woman for not wearing hijab properly exploded in the form of a national protest around the hijab issue, and it became something bigger. And again, this year we saw that the bazaar in Iran, the merchants protesting the collapse of the currency on December 28th has metamorphosed into something much bigger. So, as much as the Iranian government tries to — has tried to brush off the sanctions and persists in its nuclear position on its nuclear program and confrontation with the U.S., it’s very clear that its population is becoming more exhausted, more angry and is demanding change. And as it gets crushed between its own government’s policies and U.S. pressure, it is showing signs of enormous amount of restlessness.

AMY GOODMAN: Before we go, Professor Nasr, if you could give us a little history lesson? If you could — if you see U.S. — Trump’s saying he’s supporting the protesters, so could militarily intervene. What U.S. intervention has meant, like in 1953 in the form of a grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, Kermit Roosevelt, who came into Iran to overthrow the democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, which he succeeded in doing? Then the shah rose to power, and we see what we see coming out of that. And now the shah’s son being there, saying that — you know, Reza Pahlavi — he is encouraging these protests, and the possibility of him being brought back in.

VALI NASR: Well, I don’t think any leader from outside of Iran could be brought back in without a full-scale U.S. invasion of Iran and having U.S. troops sitting in Tehran to dictate who would be ruler. That was the scenario in Kabul and in Baghdad after — when the U.S. invaded those countries. So, I think the shah’s san, the former crown prince of Iran, has ability to rally the crowds or call on them to do things and has a certain support, but his ability to actually take over the government in Iran is absent.

In 1953, the U.S. supported a coup that was led by Iran’s own military. So, there was a military on the ground, there were people on the ground, and the U.S. could support them to change the government. The U.S. does not have that capability in Iran right now. It doesn’t even have an embassy. It has no relationship with any element of power in Iran — bureaucracy, people in the political circle, Iran’s military, Revolutionary Guards. The United States has no relations with them. So, either it can wage full-scale war on Iran — which President Trump does not seem to be eager to do — or it can hope to squeeze Iran economically in order to create political unrest in Iran.

So, I think the model that is more apt for Iran is something like what happened in Libya or Syria after the Arab Spring — in other words, a massive popular uprising that eventually could overwhelm the state and its security forces. But that’s actually a recipe for chaos and civil war in Iran. It’s not recipe for a neat and clean regime change.

So, U.S. intervention right now looks very, very different. U.S. intervention is in the form of trying to create space for the protesters to continue to agitate against the government, and then make the life of the Iranian people miserable so that more of them would join the protests.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Vali Nasr, we thank you for being with us, professor of international affairs, Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, SAIS. His new piece for Project Syndicate, “Why This Time Is Different for Iran.”

Next up, as Trump threatens Iran, Venezuela, Mexico, Greenland and more, we speak with the renowned historian Alfred McCoy. His new book, Cold War on Five Continents: A Global History of Empire and Espionage. Stay with us.