Cruz urges Trump to arm Iranian protesters, push for regime change

Ted Cruz urged Donald Trump to intensify pressure on Iran by arming protesters so they could overthrow their government, a demand that pushed well past sanctions and public backing into support for active regime collapse. On the “School of War” podcast with Aaron MacLean, the Texas Republican said Trump should increase pressure on Tehran, including by arming Iranians “to let them overthrow their own government.”

Cruz made that argument publicly on Jan. 29, 2026, writing on X, “We should be arming the protesters in Iran. NOW.” In the same post, he said that if Iranians overthrew “the Ayatollah” it would make America “much, much safer.” He also said in a Senate statement that he stood “in solidarity with the Iranian people who are bravely taking to the streets” and called on “freedom-loving nations everywhere” to back them.

The comments landed as protests inside Iran were already feeding a sharper U.S. policy debate. A Congressional Research Service report updated Jan. 21, 2026 said nationwide demonstrations began in late December 2025 and triggered a crackdown that appeared to have quelled the unrest, at least temporarily, while questions about the durability of Iran’s authoritarian system remained. The same report said Trump had said in early January that he was considering intervening to “rescue” protesters, and a separate CRS brief laid out possible U.S. responses that Congress could weigh.

Cruz kept pressing the case in the months that followed. On Feb. 24, 2026, he said he had told Trump that the Iranian regime was on the brink of collapse and that “limited” strikes inside Iran were likely soon. On March 6, 2026, he said the regime needed to be “removed from power,” reinforcing a line that moved from rhetorical solidarity toward explicit endorsement of regime change.

The practical stakes are far larger than a one-off statement. Arming protesters would mark a direct escalation in U.S. involvement and raise immediate questions about who would receive weapons, how they would be routed, and whether Washington could control where they ended up. In April, Trump said Washington had armed Kurdish Iranian opposition groups during January demonstrations, while Iran claimed protesters were U.S.-armed, underscoring the diplomatic blowback that would follow any overt American effort to equip opposition forces. For a government that Cruz has described in other remarks as a state sponsor of terrorism, the argument inside Republican foreign policy circles has clearly shifted from pressure to the riskier language of collapse.