"We are locked and loaded and ready to go," the president said in a post on Truth Social early Friday, after economic protests in the Islamic Republic took a sharply violent turn.

Iran tension soars, Trump warns violence against protesters could bring an American intervention: "We are locked and loaded and ready to go."

Anti-regime protests entered a fifth day as demonstrations spread across Tehran and other cities, with reports of deaths emerging amid escalating nationwide unrest.

U.S. sanctions on Iran have taken a heavy toll on the country’s economy, contributing to the current protest movement.

As the U.S. and Israel back Iranians' right to protest against their leaders, authorities in Tehran detain students and declare a sudden holiday.

Beginning as a strike by “shopkeepers and bazaar merchants” over the rampant devaluation of Iran ’s rial currency, the growing protests have since become an “outcry of political anger,” said DW. The Tehran bazaar is seen as a “political early warning system and a potential multiplier,