President Donald Trump said on Friday that Iran’s halting of 800 scheduled executions had a “big impact” on his decision not to authorize military operations against the regime in Tehran yet.
“[Iran] had, yesterday, scheduled over 800 hangings. They didn’t hang anyone,” the president told reporters while he left the White House to spend the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago home. “They canceled the hangings. That had a big impact.”
In a social media post on Friday, Trump said he “greatly respect[s] the fact that all scheduled hangings … have been canceled,” and thanked the regime for doing so.
The Iranian regime and its security forces have cracked down on mass protests that have taken place recently. More than 2,600 people have been killed and more than 19,000 other people detained, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. The regime has also implemented an internet blackout, making communication and documentation much more difficult, though it appears the protests have begun subsiding in recent days.
The president’s comments on Friday suggest a much different tone than he had earlier this week.
“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday. “I have canceled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY.”
Trump, on Friday, denied that his decision was swayed by allies in the region, as had been reported.
“Nobody convinced me,” he said. “I convinced myself.”
All of the president’s comments about deciding not to strike Iran could still be subterfuge designed to lull the Iranian leaders into a false sense of security.
Iran’s exiled former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi urged the president on Friday to conduct “a surgical strike” on the regime’s “paramilitary assets,” to weaken the government’s ability to crack down on protesters.
Trump, on Wednesday, said Pahlavi “seems very nice,” but questioned “how he’d play within his own country,” and noted, “We really aren’t up to that point yet.”
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He added, “I don’t know whether or not his country would accept his leadership, and certainly if they would, that would be fine with me.”
Less than a week before the U.S. military bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities in June, the president said he “may do it,” or “I may not do it,” leaving ambiguity for Tehran to decipher. As a part of the president’s misdirection, press secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement from Trump aloud at a press briefing on June 19 saying he would decide on whether to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities “within the next two weeks.” Less than two days later, Trump gave the order for the operation.
