When President Donald Trump told protesters in Iran that “help is on its way,” they took heart. Their hopes rose further on Wednesday, with news that the Pentagon had ordered some non-essential personnel from its largest Middle East air base, a move seen as preparation for battle. But on Thursday, when Trump reversed course, announcing that Iran’s regime had agreed to stop killing its people in the streets, protestors felt betrayed, they told TIME. “He’s not only yellow on the outside, he’s also yellow inside,” said an arts teacher in Tehran.
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“After he said the Iranian authorities had told him there won’t be any more killings and executions, everyone was just stunned,” said an Iranian interviewed Friday, after traveling out of the country. “Everyone was enraged; they just kept saying this bastard used us as cannon fodder. Iranians feel that they were played, that he fooled them, deceived them.”
Read more: What’s Happening in Iran Right Now, Explained
“Trump is worse than Obama,” said a 40-year-old businessman in Tehran, who said he called friends and relatives to give them the good news after Trump’s “help is on its way” post. “He screwed up. He pulled the rug from under our feet.”
The interviews were conducted after Trump appeared to back down from carrying out long-threatened military action against Iran this week. But the President added to the uncertainty again on Saturday by calling for an end to the rule of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
“It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran,” he told POLITICO, after reportedly reading a series of posts from the Iranian leader blaming Trump for the deaths of protesters. “The man is a sick man who should run his country properly and stop killing people,” he added.
His comments may not be enough to bring protesters back out onto the streets, however. Trump, who ordered the U.S. military to join Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear program in June, had urged on the latest protests nearly from the start. The demonstrations began in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar on Dec. 28, in response to the abrupt, catastrophic devaluation of Iran’s currency, then grew steadily across the country. In the past — 2009, 2017, 2019, and 2022 — Iran’s authoritarian regime had crushed mass protests. But five days into this outbreak, on Jan. 2, Trump made an explicit promise on Truth Social: “If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protestors, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
Iranians took heart. On Jan. 8, at the start of the Iranian weekend and following calls by Iran’s exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi and other opposition groups, millions took to the streets across the country.
The regime, in turn, responded with extreme violence. First, as it has done in the past before directing live fire into groups of its own citizens, it disconnected the nation of 90 million from the internet, then cut cell phone, SMS and land lines. Security forces then mounted an onslaught that left “thousands dead”, according to Khamenei, in remarks carried by the state TV Saturday. “When I saw the man a few metres ahead of me fall backwards, I didn’t understand what had happened,” said the businessman, describing a scene on Jan. 8 on a Tehran street. “When we gathered around him, all I could see in the dark night was a red spot on his forehead. It was only when the blood from the back of his head pooled at our feet that we realized he’d been shot by a sniper.”
While the Iranian regime ordered the attacks, “Trump is also responsible for the death of these 15,000,” he said, quoting one estimate of the dead. “Because many of the protesters took to the streets when they saw his post that the US is locked and loaded.” He said that the U.S. must have made a deal with the Islamic Republic “to betray Iranians like this.”
The killings occurred across the country. In the northern city of Zirab, a 39-year-old man said that, on the next day, Jan. 9, protestors were forced down a street only to see the way ahead blocked, with security forces at their back. “Then the streetlights went out, and machine guns started shooting,” he said. “Nothing could be seen, everyone was falling down, either from bullets or not seeing ahead of them, trying to get away.” The resident said he doesn’t know how many were killed, but that in the next few days there were as many as 17 missing in the city of a few thousand. Iran’s rulers publicly gloated over Trump’s reversal. On Friday, Trump thanked them for promising to stop the planned executions of 800 protestors, the assurance he had offered as grounds for withholding the military action so widely expected that international flights steered around Iranian airspace.
“Trump says a lot of nonsense and gibberish,” Tehran’s prosecutor, Ali Salehi, replied on Saturday, according to state TV. “Our reaction will be forceful, preventive and swift. Indictments have been issued for numerous cases and sent to courts.”
Iranians say they are already living with the consequences of Trump’s reversal. “It’s already martial law,” said a woman in Tehran. “Now, after Trump went back on his word, they’ve become even more brazen. I saw a checkpoint on Marzdaran Boulevard where they were checking the cellphones of people.
“I’ve lost all hope,” she said. “Trump’s not going to do anything. Why should he? He doesn’t care about us.”
Others say they retain hope that Trump still might act. “My husband believes that this is Trump’s usual pattern, to confuse them [the Islamic Republic],” said the Tehran resident. “He says if Trump does not attack, how can the regime be toppled? Iranians are doing everything they can, but the regime is just too savage.” “He is tricking the regime,” said an engineer in Tehran, who also sees Trump’s reversal as tactical. “He’ll attack, and attack hard. He’s going to go after Zahhak himself,” the engineer said, referring to the name of the most evil character in Iranian mythology, used by protestors to describe Khamenei. “There can’t be any other option,” he added. “It’s different this time.”
The businessman also hopes that this uprising will be different, so much so that he stayed behind in Iran when his wife and child flew out of the country on Thursday. But he says the protesters would need help. “The people on the streets did all they could do. We were facing machine guns on pick-up trucks, empty-handed. The only way we can win is with foreign intervention, like Kosovo or Bosnia.”
Whatever Trump ultimately decides to do, most people in Iran agree that the protests have gone underground.
“Right now the uprising is paralyzed,” said the man from Zirab, who put the blame on Trump as well as the brutality of the regime. “I don’t know if it will ever recover.”
