The Gun, the Myth, and the Mirror

Trump now warns Tehran not to shoot protesters. He praises Iranians for courage, scolds repression, and frames unrest as the inevitable consequence of a regime that has lost legitimacy. On its face, none of this is wrong. Iran’s rulers are brutal, corrupt, and propped up by fear. But taken seriously, the argument rebounds straight back onto Trump himself.

A former UK Ambassador to Iran has cautioned that predictions of collapse are premature because the regime retains a firm grip on the security services. It sounds sober and diplomatic. It is also a familiar mistake. History is littered with regimes that had total control of the gun right up to the moment they didn’t. Romania in 1989. Egypt in 2011. Iran in 1979. In every case, Western observers pointed to loyal security forces as proof of durability. In every case, collapse came not slowly, but suddenly, once legitimacy cracked and elite cohesion failed. Control of coercion buys time. It does not buy permanence. Treating it as a guarantee is not realism. It is a failure of historical memory.

Trump’s hypocrisy sits on the same analytical flaw. He condemns repression when it is practised by enemies, but excuses or encourages it when directed at his own opponents. Iranian protesters are “brave”. American protesters become “thugs”. He praises police who “don’t have to be so nice”, minimises January 6 as passion, and treats opposition as treachery. The principle is not opposition to repression. It is opposition to repression by people he dislikes.

The contradiction deepens on legitimacy. Trump frames Iranian unrest as revolt against an illegitimate system. Yet he has spent years corroding faith in US elections, rejecting certified results, and insisting that only defeat can be fraudulent. He demands democratic standards abroad while undermining them at home. That is not a rhetorical slip. It is a structural contradiction.

There is a further irony. Trump warns about regimes that rely on coercion and loyalty tests, while his own movement increasingly depends on both. Personal loyalty is prized over institutional duty. Judges, officials, and officers are applauded when they comply and denounced when they do not. This is precisely the logic that hollows out regimes from within. It is the logic he claims to oppose in Tehran.

Here is where the ambassador’s reassurance becomes actively misleading. Iran is authoritarian with tight gun control. Violence there flows downward. The United States is saturated with firearms. Polarisation plus delegitimisation plus guns changes the chemistry entirely. Instability does not need orders from above. It spreads horizontally. January 6 was not an aberration. It was a demonstration.

The US Army complicates matters further, and not in Trump’s favour. It does not defend a president. It defends the Constitution. That blocks the authoritarian route of tanks and decrees. It also removes the authoritarian safety valve. If legitimacy collapses, the Army steps back. The vacuum is filled by fragmented law enforcement, armed civilians, militias, and selective compliance across states.

So Trump’s hypocrisy is not merely moral. It is strategic. He dismisses the ambassador’s logic when it suits him abroad, yet relies on an even more dangerous version of it at home. He assumes force and loyalty will hold, that institutions will bend, that legitimacy can be abused without consequence.

History teaches otherwise. It always has. Those who ignore it rarely get a second tutorial.