For President Trump, it’s decision time.
Ten days ago, he said the US was prepared to go to the “rescue” of Iranian protesters if their government used violence against them.
The US was, the president said, “locked and loaded and ready to go”.
That was before the violent crackdown in Iran had really begun. Now, with its full extent being shockingly revealed, the world waits to see how Trump will respond.
“Nobody knows what President Trump is going to do except for President Trump,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “The world can keep waiting and guessing.”
But for how long?
The president’s typically all-caps social media post on Tuesday morning raised the stakes dramatically.
Spurring on the protestors, urging them to take over Iranian institutions and log the names of their “killers and abusers”, sounded like the words of a president convinced that the Iranian regime could soon fall.
And then the clearest hint yet that Trump is set on some kind of direct intervention.
“HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
Senior officials are due to discuss possible courses of action at a White House meeting on Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said he was looking at “some very strong options”.
Flushed with success in Venezuela – the president described the capture of Nicolas Maduro as one of the most successful operations in US history – the temptation to deploy the military must be considerable.
As events last summer demonstrated, the US is perfectly capable of mounting attacks from a distance. B-2 stealth bombers flew 30-hour round trip missions from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to drop bunker busting bombs on two of Iran’s most important nuclear sites.
Whether the US opts for more of the same, or pinpoint attacks on elements of the regime responsible for the current repression, it is reasonable to assume Washington has a lengthy target list to draw on.
Pentagon officials, quoted by the BBC’s US partner CBS News, say the response could include a variety of other, more covert methods, including cyber operations and covert psychological campaigns intended to disrupt and confuse Iran’s command structures.
One scenario that can almost certainly be ruled out, however, is anything remotely resembling what unfolded in Caracas on 3 January.
