In cafes and restaurants tucked down narrow side streets, amid billowing smoke from shisha pipes and slim cigarettes, the conversation among Iranians in the Turkish border city of Van turns to US President Donald Trump.
“He absolutely will strike,” said one woman with sharply drawn eyebrows, sitting in the warm glow of a heater blasting at full capacity against the minus-5ºC temperatures outside. “It will be in the coming days.”
Mr Trump has threatened many times to punish Iran in retaliation to a violent crackdown on protests in the country, in which at least 3,000 people have been killed, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists news agency. He initially said Iran would “have to pay hell” if security forces killed protesters, even as the death toll among demonstrators rose. He later said he would take “strong action” if protesters were executed, before insisting that he had been given assurances that this would not happen.
On Thursday, the US envoy to the UN said that for Washington “all options were on the table” to end the killings in Iran. Iranian government officials have said that they would respond to any US strike on the country.
In Van, Iranians have sought an internet connection during an continuing blackout back at home. Others come and go across the border to work in Turkey, where they can earn salaries many times higher than they can in Iran.
The country’s economy has deteriorated over a period of years, and the latest round of protests was sparked by a sharp drop in the value of the rial against the US dollar, further pushing the costs of basic essentials such as eggs and cooking oil out of people’s reach.
Some said they supported the idea of US intervention if it helped to change the status quo in the country, in terms of restrictions imposed by the government and the dire economic situation. Some expressed frustration over a lack of follow-through on pledges from Mr Trump to intervene so far. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they planned to return to Iran and feared retribution from authorities for speaking openly.
“We don’t like Trump making decisions for us. But he has to do something, because we are being suffocated,” said one man, who wore a signet ring on one finger. “But then he said he would respond if people were killed, and he hasn’t done anything.”
For others, the frustration with the global response to the protests is even wider reaching.
“Look, the whole world has said, oh, ‘poor Iranians.’ But they haven’t actually done anything to help us,” said another man, dressed in a black jacket and with salt and pepper hair.
A family friend back in Iran was shot in the head and killed during the recent protests, he said, showing a picture of the young man on his phone. In terms of a future ruler for Iran, he would like, “anyone who is qualified and appropriate, except those guys,” he added, indicating with a nod that he was referring to the current clerical leadership.
Many others said that what they wanted was a strike that would lead to the end of four decades of clerical leadership in Iran, seeing few alternatives and distrusting the idea of reform from within.
“Most people support this idea [of striking Iran], if they kill the mullahs,” said a man who wanted to be identified as DS, as he lit a cigarette. “People want the mullahs gone. They are rotten from the feet up.”
Like many others, he accused Iran’s rulers of using revenue from the country’s vast oil and gas reserves to prop up armed groups across the Middle East, depriving Iranians of revenue that could improve their quality of life and ability to meet basic needs. The Iranian government sees the groups as an “axis of resistance” against Israel, its arch enemy in the region.
“Our money goes to Hezbollah in Lebanon, to the Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq, because the regime wants to extend its influence in other countries of the region to protect itself,” the man said. “The leaders give the money to those proxy forces, and Iranian people don’t see it, they don’t see any benefit from it. If they did, I swear our roads would not be made of tarmac, but of shining ceramic.”
Opposition to the Islamic Republic does not mean that Iranians necessarily support Israel, with which Iran fought a 12-day war last summer. One woman with a sharp fringe said that she welcomed strikes on Iran on the condition that it did not lead to the deaths of citizens.
“In the 12-day war, Israel said they didn’t kill people, but they did,” she said. “Things would be better in Iran without these people [the current leaders], without a president or a supreme leader. We don’t trust them.”
Mr Trump said on Friday that it was not pressure from Middle East countries, who have advocated for diplomacy over military action against Iran, but his own decision making that has guided his thinking so far. “Nobody convinced me. I convinced myself,” he told reporters in response to a question on holding back on strikes on Iran. The answer to the question of whether Washington will attack Iran as a deterrent to prevent further crackdowns remains unknown.
Regional countries, including neighbouring Turkey, have also stated that they oppose military intervention in Iran. With US bases in Turkey, Qatar and other Gulf nations, they would be likely to be among the first to feel the impact of retaliatory action by Tehran, and are also wary of military escalation that could disrupt years of careful diplomacy with Iran.
Other Iranians, including those who oppose the Islamic Republic, are against the idea of military intervention because they believe it risks turning Iranians and their demands for political and financial betterment into pawns for foreign powers to achieve their own interests.
US strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities at the end of the Iran- Israel war last year did not lead to meaningful change for ordinary Iranians, and Tehran accused the military operations at that time of derailing negotiations for a potential return to an agreement over its nuclear programme. The US pulled out of a previous deal in 2018, and reimposed sanctions on Iran, which further reduced Iranians’ quality of life.
Without a credible plan for the aftermath, the idea of the US striking targets associated with the Iranian government does not guarantee any change from the status quo, or one that would prioritise Iranians’ interests.
Given Iran’s pledge to respond to any US military action, such decisions risk an escalation towards further conflict that would make living conditions even worse for Iranians, some analysts and observers say.
“Military interventions have not brought democracy, human rights or prosperity to the targets of prior interventions, including Iraq, Libya, Palestine and Afghanistan,” wrote Etan Mabourakh, of the National Iranian American Council, on X. “Iran's long history is riddled with examples of external interventions and military actions that have only robbed Iranians of their agency to decide their future.”
In the same post, he acknowledged the huge death toll from the current protests, calling it a “massacre” but said US lawmakers should, “reject efforts to exploit their [Iranians’] suffering to justify war or further violence.”
Others oppose US intervention because they support Iran’s current system of governance. Officials, including supreme leader Ali Khamenei, have described the protests as a US and Israeli plot against Iran.
At the Kapikoy border crossing between Iran and Turkey on Friday, one man praised the security forces’ response to the protests and said “We are not afraid of Trump,” even if he did end up striking the country.
Back in Van city, the conversation falls quiet as other customers enter the cafes and restaurants.
