Middle East: waiting for Donald

By Richard North - January 14, 2026

In a story which was running all day yesterday, president Trump has told Iranian protesters that “help is on its way”, warning that the regime’s “killers and abusers” would “pay a big price” for their actions.

This came as diverse reports were conveying a death toll of around 2,000 protestors, shot in the streets by regime security forces, although some reports suggest that the number could be very much higher, in the order of 12,000.

We also learn of the first planned execution of a protestor which is set to take place today, a young man by the name of Erfan Soltani, 26, due to be hanged four days after he was seized in Fardis, near Tehran.

Trump states on his social media account that he has cancelled “all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS” (his capitals), and Washington has warned its citizens to leave Iran immediately, raising speculation the US strikes could be imminent, possibly with Israeli involvement.

With the Iranian mobile phone and internet systems still down and extensive jamming in place degrading Elon Musk’s Starlink system, there is very little news coming out of Iran from the protesters, for the possibility of imminent strikes has become the main focus of media attention.

The Washington Post, for instance, is rehearsing the arguments for and against military intervention, pointing to the danger of an accident or failure as the US military and spy services attempt more high-risk operations.

There is also the possibility, the paper says, that the fall of the Iranian government could lead to a more militant regime or another failed state in the Middle East.

Nevertheless, the National Security Council met yesterday to prepare options for the president, without presenting any preferences. Those options might include targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities, precision “decapitation” of the regime’s leaders, strikes on targets associated with Iran’s repressive security services, and unspecified measures to counter Iran’s blocking of protesters’ communications.

The Politico website has also been exploring the options, with a piece headed “Trump says he has many military options on Iran. He doesn’t”, suggesting that US troops and ships that were once at the president’s disposal have shifted to the Caribbean. And there are no plans for the movement of major assets.

The president can, of course, still order airstrikes that target Iranian leadership or military installations but Politico has Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed – the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee querying the value of any such strikes.

“They’re certainly repressing their people”, he says of the Iranian regime, but adds that “the president has yet to make the case that a military strike will either aid the population or get the government to change dramatically”.

Then there is also the problem that the Trump administration has been eating away at dwindling US weapons stockpiles, with the fast pace of military operations in the Red Sea and Venezuela, and the previous operation in Iran. Stocks have also been diminished by supplies sent to Israel and Ukraine.

The situation gets all the more complicated by having to take into account the probability of Iranian retaliation. The regime has a formidable rocket and missile arsenal, buried deep in protected bunkers (pictured) which could be used to strike US forces in the region, targeting the 10,000 troops at Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar and the smaller groupings in Iraq, Syria and Jordan.

If the regime embarks on a prolonged retaliation cycle, the US may struggle to find enough anti-missile systems from its limited stockpiles so defend all its bases. A former defence official warns that “We could get in a sticky situation very quickly on that front”.

Despite this, the Pentagon argues that it could bring assets into the region very quickly and, in terms of offensive capabilities, the US has an impressive reach, able to mount operations from its bases in the Middle East as well as global strike missions which originate in the United States.

From a UK media perspective, the Telegraph has Roland Oliphant, its chief foreign analyst, suggesting that if Trump does decide to intervene in Iran, there are four ways he can do it.

One option is a symbolic strike – or series of strikes – designed only to send a message and redeem Trump’s promise to hit Iran in the event the regime started killing protesters. There are no shortage of potential targets for such action, from Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases around the country to missile facilities.

But to force a real change in direction, stop the security forces killing protesters, or actually undermine the regime, Oliphant argues that a more sustained and more widespread bombardment would be required. It would need to hit not only headquarters and ministry buildings, but also an array of bases and staging posts used by the IRGC and its Basij militia throughout the country.

A more precise option might be to consider means of kidnapping or assassinating the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. For a White House team flush with success from the tactically brilliant capture of Nicolás Maduro, Oliphant says, that must be tempting. As in Venezuela, the US might hope that there are others in the regime ready to play by Washington’s rules – by jettisoning any nuclear ambitions and easing up on repression – provided they can stay in power.

The fourth option might apply if Trump wants to avoid a Middle Eastern quagmire and seeks to confine himself to a “non-kinetic” option. His main tool would be cyber attacks to break the regime’s communications blackout, allowing activists to reach the outside world and better coordinate their own actions, while silencing – or perhaps even blinding – officials as they attempt to contain the protests erupting in towns throughout the country.

A separate piece in the Telegraph by David Blair, the paper’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, looks at the communications blackout in more detail.

Acknowledging that the regime has taken the draconian step of disconnecting the entire country from the internet for the first time since 2019, Blair refers to Musk’s Starlink system. This, he says, cannot be jammed but it can be slowed down so drastically as to make the system unusable, by jamming the GPS signal.

Blair, however, asserts that there is a way for Musk to foil the regime’s campaign against Starlink terminals in Iran – although not yet. Every smartphone in the world made since 2022, he says, “has the technology to connect directly to Musk’s satellites, without any need for a terminal, and to use the billionaire’s constellation as a vast and invisible phone tower in the heavens”.

The regime might be able to make 50,000 terminals unusable, he states, but it would not be able to achieve this outcome with tens of millions of smartphones in the hands of ordinary Iranians. The drawback, though, is that it might take two years to provide full D2C internet coverage for Iran.

Apart from the fact that this would be too late to affect current events, Mr Musk’s Grok suggests that Blair is still being wildly unrealistic.

D2C requires carrier partnerships for spectrum access and integration and Iran has no such partnership. There is no local operator leasing bands to Starlink, and the regime is not likely to permit this. Without such a facility, standard Iranian smartphones (even recent LTE/5G models) cannot authenticate or use D2C frequencies legally or technically in the country.

Even if D2C hypothetically worked, though – via global roaming or future unpartnered modes, the regime’s jamming which is already in place would cripple it more severely than dish-based Starlink. The phones use low-power, omnidirectional antennas and weaker uplink signals to the distant satellites.

Jammers already disrupt Starlink’s higher-frequency bands but the same or similar equipment (military-grade, high-power) could flood phone bands over wide areas (200–300 km radius per unit). Since phones lack directional antennas or easy repositioning – users can’t “point” better or mitigate like with a dish, there is likely to be a near-total blockage for voice/data/text in jammed zones, worse than the already-degraded (but sometimes usable) terminal service.

Then there are practical limitations. Even without jamming, D2C rollout (as of 2026) prioritises texting first, with voice/data expanding slowly. Performance needs clear sky view, and in dense urban/protest areas (where it’s most needed), buildings/terrain block signals. Low-power phone transmissions struggle at satellite distances without optimisation.

All this, therefore, points to my earlier assertion that if Mr Trump wanted a quick hit to show his support in a very practical way with a very high probability of success – and with minimum collateral damage – he need look no further than an attack on the jammers.

I’m surprised that none of the media are suggesting this as a specific option, but then, while we are wating for Donald to act, perhaps they’ve been warned off discussing something so urgent and necessary.