Iran Warns US Of War Over Supreme Leader Threat

On January 18, 2026, Iran’s political crisis reached a fever pitch as President Masoud Pezeshkian issued a stark warning to the United States and its allies: any attack on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be considered “all-out war” against Iran. This bold declaration, made in a post on X (formerly Twitter), underscored the heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington after weeks of unrest and a brutal government crackdown on protests across Iran.

Pezeshkian’s message was clear and uncompromising. “Any aggression against the Supreme Leader of our country is tantamount to all-out war against the Iranian nation,” he wrote. The statement came just a day after U.S. President Donald Trump, in an interview with Politico, openly called for new leadership in Iran. Trump described Khamenei as “a sick man who should run his country properly and stop killing people,” and accused him of using extreme violence to cling to power.

According to FRANCE 24, Trump’s comments didn’t stop there. He charged that “the leadership should focus on running its country properly, as I do with the United States, and not killing people by the thousands to keep control.” Trump’s rhetoric, coupled with reports that U.S. officials had considered military action against Iran but ultimately pulled back, contributed to a volatile diplomatic atmosphere. Sources cited by Haaretz and The Guardian revealed that U.S. plans for a possible strike were abandoned after Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi relayed a message indicating that 800 executions had been canceled—an act that reportedly helped defuse immediate tensions.

The background to these dramatic exchanges is a wave of protests that began in late December 2025, initially sparked by soaring inflation and the collapse of the Iranian currency. The unrest erupted at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, quickly spreading nationwide as Iranians from all walks of life—shopkeepers, students, and workers—joined demonstrations demanding both economic relief and sweeping political change. As AFP and Reuters reported, what began as protests over living costs soon transformed into the most significant challenge to the clerical establishment in decades.

The government’s response was swift and severe. On January 8, authorities imposed a near-total shutdown of internet and phone services, a move that rights groups say was aimed at suppressing communication, obscuring the scale of the unrest, and stifling independent reporting. Amnesty International and Norway-based Iran Human Rights have verified thousands of deaths, with the latter confirming 3,428 protesters killed by security forces—though estimates from opposition groups and unnamed officials put the number as high as 20,000. Iranian officials themselves have claimed at least 5,000 people were killed, including about 500 security personnel. The Human Rights Activists news agency reported over 24,000 arrests during the crackdown.

Despite the communications blackout, information about the violence continued to leak out. According to FRANCE 24, Amnesty International described the crackdown as a “massacre,” while Iran Human Rights warned that the true death toll was likely much higher than official figures suggest. The blackout also made it nearly impossible for media to independently verify casualty numbers, but the scale of the repression was evident in the stories of families anxiously awaiting news about detained relatives and in the accounts of torture and lack of medical care for prisoners.

Solidarity demonstrations broke out in cities across Europe, including Berlin, London, and Paris, as members of the Iranian diaspora and human rights advocates demanded international attention and intervention. Inside Iran, while street protests subsided under the weight of security force deployments and violence, the unrest found new forms—residents in major cities chanted anti-Khamenei slogans from their windows, their voices echoing through neighborhoods in Tehran, Shiraz, and Isfahan.

The Iranian leadership, meanwhile, has consistently blamed the United States and Israel for fomenting the protests. Khamenei himself called Trump a “criminal” and accused Washington of supporting “terrorists and armed rioters” responsible for killing “innocent Iranians.” President Pezeshkian echoed this line, stating on X, “If there are hardship and constraints in the lives of the dear people of Iran, one of the main causes is the longstanding hostility and inhumane sanctions imposed by the US government and its allies.”

Internet restrictions, though briefly eased, remained in place as of January 18. Netblocks, a monitor of global internet disruptions, reported that “traffic levels have fallen after a brief, heavily filtered restoration of select Google and messaging services in Iran.” The government’s heavy-handed approach extended to the dismissal of Irancell’s chief executive for failing to comply with the blackout order, as reported by Fars News Agency. At the same time, President Pezeshkian told his cabinet he had recommended lifting internet restrictions “as soon as possible,” a sign of the internal debate over how to manage the flow of information amid international scrutiny.

Internationally, the crisis drew in regional and global powers. According to Axios and The Guardian, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman both urged the U.S. to exercise restraint, warning that a military strike on Iran could trigger unpredictable and potentially catastrophic retaliation. The Pentagon, for its part, reportedly feared that the U.S. lacked sufficient military presence in the region to repel an Iranian counterattack and was concerned about the safety of the 30,000 American service members stationed across the Middle East.

Against this backdrop, the fate of thousands of detained protesters remained uncertain. Families like that of Erfan Soltani, a young shop employee sentenced to death for his role in the protests, anxiously awaited news. Soltani’s cousin, Somayeh, told The Guardian she was “relieved to know my cousin Erfan is alive,” but added, “I am worried because I received news that he has been tortured under custody and hasn’t received medical attention yet. I appeal to the international community to please bring attention to his detention conditions.”

By January 18, the streets of Iran had returned to an uneasy calm, with schools reopening and security forces maintaining a visible presence in major cities. Yet the underlying tensions—economic hardship, political repression, and the threat of further violence—remained unresolved. As leaders in Tehran and Washington continued to trade barbs, the risk of escalation lingered, leaving Iranians and the world watching anxiously for what might come next.

The events of these weeks have laid bare the deep fractures within Iran and the perilous state of U.S.-Iran relations. As President Pezeshkian’s warning made plain, the stakes could hardly be higher.