President Donald Trump is meeting with his senior advisers today, January 13, 2026, to discuss his options on Iran. The New York Times reports that these options include military strikes, ranging from covert cyberattacks to kinetic attacks on military installations and targeting the regime’s leadership. Cyberattacks are necessary, but so is overt action.
Earlier today, the president posted on the Truth Social platform that he has canceled all meetings with Iranian officials “until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS.” He encouraged Iranians to continue the protests and “save the names of the killers and abusers.”
[Trump] encouraged Iranians to continue the protests and “save the names of the killers and abusers.”
There are two misunderstandings about attacks on Iran. First, many of the usual suspects are giving briefings behind closed doors, warning that attacks could unite people behind the regime. This is nonsense. The current protests erupted only months after the Twelve-Day War with Israel in June. Then, the regime attempted to utilize the war to unify Iranians behind the state. For the first time, it erected statues of Iran’s pre-Islamic heroes, but the public unveilings featured more empty seats than people.
The few messages my colleagues and I have received throughout the regime-imposed blackout during the protests have been unanimous: “We are doing everything we can, but we need foreign intervention to succeed. Get the U.S. government to help us!” Foreign wars unite revolutionary regimes in their infancy, as the Iran-Iraq War did, but they weaken them domestically once they have lost popular legitimacy. Desert Storm led to a popular uprising in Southern Iraq.
The second misconception is that cyberattacks suffice. Advocates view it through a military and logistical lens, rather than a political one. Cyberattacks are necessary to disrupt the regime’s command, control, and communications used for suppressing the protests. Cyberattacks might have sufficed when people were on the streets, to disrupt the crackdown, but the protests are subsiding after the regime reportedly killed 12,000 people, mostly in the first two nights of the riots.
Until proven otherwise, Iranians presume the world will not come to their aid.
To convince people to return to the streets, Trump must provide them with tangible proof of support. To scale back the crackdown, he needs to make the regime’s leadership and suppression forces fear that they might lose their lives. Cyberattacks make implementing a crackdown more difficult, but kinetic attacks encourage people to return to the streets and dissuade the decision-makers from giving the order to shoot them. Both are necessary.
Iranians are right to be suspicious. When they protested in 2009, 2017, 2019, and 2022, they did not receive material assistance. Trump was president during two of those protests, but he was distracted by other matters. Until proven otherwise, Iranians presume the world will not come to their aid. Covert action, even if announced, will not assure them that they have a foreign patron.
Logistics matter in a revolutionary movement, but so does morale. Trump needs a military plan that addresses both. This means covert action to give the protesters their best shot at success and overt strikes to revive their morale, which is currently low. These, combined with another call to action by Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, will bring them back out of their homes and keep them there until they succeed.
