President Donald Trump on Tuesday might have hinted at unleashing a weapon against Iran that its rulers fear more than American and Israeli bombs.
While fielding questions in the Oval Office, Trump was asked point-blank if he planned to arm the Iranian civilians whose protests helped spark the current war in the Middle East.
His answer couldn’t have been comforting for the tyrants of Tehran.
ALERT: When asked about arming Iranian protesters, President Trump said, “I don’t want to say that but yes.
“They killed 42,000 unarmed civilians. They shot them with snipers on the rooftops — right in the forehead,” the president continued.pic.twitter.com/mmDsUT9mzE
— The Western Journal (@WesternJournalX) May 5, 2026
“I don’t want to say that, but yes,” Trump replied, apparently indicating that anti-regime elements in Iran would be provided with weapons as part of the U.S. war with the Islamic Republic’s rulers.
He went on to describe the plight of the Iranian opposition. In a country bereft of Second Amendment-style rights to self-defense, the government enjoys a monopoly on weapons — and in the brutal logic of Third-World Islam, that means a monopoly on power.
“They don’t have any guns,” Trump said. “You could have 200,000 people protesting, and five or six sick people with guns, and when they start shooting them right between the eyes, and you see a guy fall, and then another one fall, and you have no guns, very few people would be able to stand there.
“I tell ’em not to.”
To give some perspective on the problem. Trump then said the Islamist regime had killed “42,000” protesters,
(Like any fact about the Middle East, the exact number of protesters killed is in dispute. Iran claims it’s as low as 3,000. In a Jan. 27 piece, the left-wing U.K. Guardian quoted opposition figures estimating the death toll at more than 30,000. Maybe Trump’s figure was high. Maybe it was low. Maybe it was dead on. But even having the conversation proves his point.)
Trump used similar language, but tentative, in an interview Monday night with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.
“If they had guns, they would fight back. I’m convinced of that,” Trump said.
“But you know, you can’t have an unarmed population against people with AK-47s and stand there, even if you have 250,000 people. So you know, you started it off by asking me, would I like to see them? And I’m very torn on it, because they lost 42,000 people in the first two weeks. I don’t really want to see that. They have to have guns. And I think they’re getting some guns. As soon as they have guns, they’ll fight like, as good as anybody there is.”
Of course, as with almost everything Trump, his comments might have reflected more of his own thought process still in the works than a finalized policy. Trump supporters have had years to get used to it (Democrats never will), but his high-powered, keep-’em-guessing bravado must really be driving the country’s opponents crazy — in combat on the battlefield or in conference rooms as allies.
Whether his comments Monday night or Tuesday represent an actual policy shift remains to be seen. But what is clear is that the Islamist fanaticists in charge of Iran today — the successors of the Islamist fanaticists who dragged the country back into the medieval era after Khomeini’s revolution in 1979 — fear their own Iranian subjects more than their external enemies.
And with good reason.
The slow-boiling anger of a nation that has been governed mercilessly by fanatics for almost 50 years, turned into an international pariah on the world stage and a police state at home, is the greatest threat to the murderous mullahs and their world.
(For a reminder of how badly things can go wrong for a Muslim ruler, see “Gaddafi, Muamar, excruciating death of.”)
The American Navy in the Persian Gulf, American-Israeli planes dominating the skies, and deadly Israeli intelligence strikes in the heart of Tehran are incapacitating the Islamic Republic’s power on a daily basis.
But it’s the Iranian people themselves who are going to have to rid the nation of its poisonous leadership.
It’s not an idle lesson for the rest of the world — and for Americans in particular: An unarmed population is an oppressed population.
The Iranian government might be about to find out what happens when the opposite is true.
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