Trump poses wearing 'Make Iran Great Again' hat following Maduro kidnap
Posing alongside US Senator Lindsey Graham, Trump held the hat amid concerns Iran could be the next target after Maduro's 'capture'
The New Arab Staff
06 January, 2026
US President Donald Trump was photographed on Monday holding a hat reading "Make Iran Great Again", fuelling concerns that Iran could be the next US target following the abduction of Venezuela's president.
The photograph, shared on social media by US Senator Lindsey Graham, shows Trump smiling alongside the senator while holding the hat. Graham praised Trump as the president "who has brought America back, stronger than ever, at home and abroad".
"God bless and protect the brave people of Iran who are standing up to tyranny," Graham added, referring to the protests in Iran, which have now entered their 10th day.
The slogan, a play on Trump's "Make America Great Again" campaign, appeared to signal support for regime change in Iran, as the president continues to issue threats against Tehran following the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a close Iranian ally.
Graham, a long-time Trump ally, has openly called for the Iranian government to be overthrown, saying the US president "has not turned his back on the people of Iran".
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At least 35 people have been killed and more than 1,200 detained during the protests, which erupted over spiralling living costs amid a sharp economic decline driven by US and UN sanctions and the recent 12-day war involving Israel, later joined by the United States.
In response to the unrest, Trump warned Iran on Sunday that it would be "hit very hard" if further protesters were killed. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei responded that Tehran "will not give in to the enemy".
Israeli media have meanwhile reported that the US is weighing "some intervention" in Iran in response to the protests.
Following the capture of Maduro, Iran condemned the move as "illegal" and said its relations with Venezuela remain unchanged, calling for the deposed leader's immediate release.
After months of threats and pressure, the US bombed Venezuela and abducted Maduro and his wife on alleged drug trafficking charges. Trump later said Washington would "run" the country and gain access to its vast oil reserves.
Alongside Iran and Venezuela, Trump has also threatened to annex Greenland, insisting the US must take control of the territory for "security reasons". Six European countries, including the UK and France, have publicly backed Denmark in response to the warnings.
Netanyahu is pushing for another U.S. intervention in Iran. Will Trump take the bait?
Days after his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump threatened to intervene in Iran if the country killed any protesters. Analyst Sina Toossi breaks down recent events and whether another US-Israeli aggression on Iran may be on the horizon.
January 2, 2026
MONDOWEISS
Benjamin Netanyahu with Donald Trump at the Ben Gurion airport in May 2017. (Photo: Amos Ben Gershom GPO)
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago.
During the meeting, the Israeli leader reportedly pushed the Trump administration to back a second round of strikes on Iran.
In a press conference after the meeting, Trump expressed support for the potential attacks.
“I hope they’re not trying to build up again, because if they are, we’re going to have no choice but very quickly, to eradicate that build up,” said Trump, referring to the alleged expansion of Iran’s ballistic missile program.
“We’ll knock them down,” he added. “We’ll knock the hell out of them.”
Days after the meeting, alluding to the recent domestic protests in Iran, Trump threatened to attack Iran if any protesters were killed.
“If Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
“Trump should know that U.S. interference in this internal matter would mean destabilizing the entire region and destroying America’s interests,” tweeted Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, shortly after. “The American people should know — Trump started this adventurism. They should be mindful of their soldiers’ safety.”
Mondoweiss U.S. correspondent Michael Arria spoke with Center for International Policy Senior Fellow Sina Toossi about these recent events, and whether they signal another potential U.S.-Israeli aggression on Iran on the horizon.
Mondoweiss: What did you make of Trump’s comments on Iran coming out of the meeting with Netanyahu? He seemed ready to back another round of Israeli strikes on Iran.
I think Netanyahu really came to this meeting with multiple demands. It wasn’t just about Iran, but also Gaza, the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire, the situation in Syria, with Lebanon, the issue of continued U.S. aid, and getting a good aid package for Israel in 2026. All of these issues.
On these issues, there are signs of some tension and some differences. We’ll have to see in the coming days and weeks exactly what areas they’re aligned on.
For example, in the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire. If you read the Israeli press, many figures and analysts close to the Netanyahu government are saying they want to have as much freedom of action as possible. They begrudgingly accepted the ceasefire. They don’t want Turkish involvement in the post-war governance. They want a very limited form of post-war governance.
So there are all these differences. Trump, for example, is more supportive of Turkish involvement, and in the meeting, Trump doubled down on supportive comments for [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan. There are all these transactions at play.
Now on the issue of Iran, it seems like, at least rhetorically, Trump made it seem like there’s no daylight between the U.S. and Israel on the issue. Even on missiles, Trump said if they try to reconstitute their missile program, we’ll hit them. If they try to reconstitute their nuclear program, we’ll hit them fast.
So there’s seemingly a harder line on nuclear than missiles, if we’re just going based off the rhetoric. For what it’s worth, there’s a report from Barak Ravid at Axios, where he discusses the differences between the U.S. and Israeli views on what constitutes a reconstitution and the kind of threshold for reconstitution of the nuclear program that would necessitate U.S. support for more strikes.
I would say that Netanyahu’s strategy and his endgame are to have regime change in Iran and for the U.S. to pay the high costs for that, both in terms of defending Israel and supporting offensive strikes against Iran. I think if Israel can get American boots on the ground, it wants them because these issues like destroying the nuclear program, destroying the missile program, they’re not really possible through airstrikes alone.
These places are heavily fortified, they’re dispersed around the country, and they’re often buried underground. You can’t verify the damage you’ve really done.
Netanyahu is now explicitly citing missiles as a pretext for America to go to war with Iran. Centering that is new. I think that’s largely because, politically, Trump has won for himself. He’s told everyone, “I am tough. I destroyed the nuclear program.”
To say the U.S. is going to war six months later? That doesn’t politically play well for Trump and it can get a lot more ugly in the next round.
The ultimate goal is regime change and regime collapse, and getting the U.S. involved in more and more wars against Iran and supporting efforts to destabilize Iran.
That’s the context. I think that we’ll have to see if Trump ultimately gave the green light for renewed strikes at this meeting. It certainly seems like at least a yellow light, if not a green light.
On the other hand, what gives me caution in that regard is that Trump’s preference is to really break Iran while minimizing the U.S. costs. They want to support protests, support unrest, and destabilize the country. I view some of the administration’s rhetoric as more aimed at that.
These protests have broken out in Iran now, and Trump is saying, “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.” I’m not sure this necessarily indicates imminent U.S. intervention. I would say that this is more aimed at further destabilizing the Iranian economy, which is in a state of uncertainty. There’s a lot of economic volatility there.
Trump’s aim is to further destabilize the situation and try to bolster the morale of some of these protesters who may want that support. Although I think the critical mass of Iranians and the social movements it will take to topple the Islamic Republic, don’t want that support.
We know Trump thinks in terms of deals and agreements, and he’s touted this postwar plan for Gaza. How does Iran factor into that vision or potentially impede it?
Since the 90s, Iran’s played the role as a potential spoiler for U.S. and Israeli aims vis-a-vis the Palestinian issue.
Consider the Oslo Accords or the Madrid Conference of 1991. Iran was excluded from these negotiated settlements and acted as a spoiler to increase the cost of its exclusion.
Currently, Iran’s main ally, Hamas, is greatly weakened, as is Hezbollah, but to act like Iran is vulnerable misunderstands the advantage that Iran has in this regard to these conflicts.
At the end of the day, Hamas and Hezbollah were both guerrilla organizations that were entrenched in the local population and boosted by legitimate grievances. Whether people like it or not, these groups have garnered a significant degree of public support.
The reality is, as long as that population is aggrieved and the occupations continue, there will always be support for resistance, and there will always be fertile ground for an outside actor like Iran, Turkey, or Egypt to support these groups.
So you could say, Iran has less influence in Gaza because Hamas has been weakened, or in Lebanon because Hezbollah’s seemingly on the back foot. However, in the longer term picture, there’s going to be more iterations of Palestinian resistance in Gaza, of Shia Lebanese and other forms of resistance in Lebanon.
Iran is doubling down on this kind of resistance access strategy. They’re viewing the fact that Hamas and Hezbollah were weakened, and the fall of Assad, as part of what led to an attack on them. That attack validated their view of strategic depth. They’re not letting up on trying to counterbalance Israel.
I think Israel’s strategic picture is actually much more dire in many ways than it was a couple of years ago. If we talk about before October 7, they were seemingly on the cusp of a grand strategic victory in terms of regional integration with U.S. partners in the Arab world with the Abraham Accords, and they were thinking the Palestinian issue was totally neutered and cast aside. They were moving ahead with their annexation aims.
Since then, yes, they’ve had these tactical military victories, but opposition to Israel is much stronger. The factors behind opposition to Israel in those areas is, if anything, much more strong. When these guerrilla organizations are not given a seat at a table, when the population’s grievances are not taken into account, when the overall structural reasons for these guerrilla organizations existing remains in tact, they are going to remain and gain strength.
Now, contrary to the pre-October 7th reality, normalization with Saudi Arabia seems further than it has been in recent years. Turkey is a much more strategic challenge. Egypt and the Arab world are reacting in ways towards Israel that they haven’t for decades. The prospect of Israeli integration with U.S. partners in the Arab world seems more distant in key ways.
So the picture is not so rosy for the Israelis, I would argue.
Could you discuss the current state of the Iranian leadership? We hear that they’re vulnerable, but we also have people like Netanyahu insisting they’re powerful enough to threaten Israel on some level. How would you assess the current government’s standing on the international stage?
I believe the most significant factor contributing to the instability of the government is the economic situation.
That is the result of, first and foremost, U.S. sanctions. The economic siege has locked Iran out of the international financial monetary system. It can’t repatriate the funds it gets from oil exports as cash reserves for itself.
These protests that broke out last Sunday in parts of the Tehran Bazaar were partially triggered by the economic reality and the depreciation of the currency. There’s also about 40 to 50 percent year-to-year inflation since last year. So there’s the context of more deep-seated and widespread discontent with the government that goes back decades, but there’s definitely an economic spark.
As I mentioned earlier, for something to seriously challenge the Islamic Republic and its political system, I believe a broad, inclusive social movement would be necessary, one that could mobilize a critical mass of Iranians into the streets. These protests have not been that way so far. They began in Tehran, again, with some of the bazaar and certain merchant sectors.
Over the past couple of days, it has largely fizzled out in Tehran, and the government has been repressing the protests. There have been many arrests. In the more rural areas, there have been clashes, violent crackdowns, and a number of deaths.
These protests have ebbed and flowed. To me, what’s more interesting is the evolution of governance styles in Iran, but there’s no doubt that people are aggrieved. These protests are real.
What about those Trump tweets saying the U.S. would come to the protesters’ rescue?
Netanyahu and Trump obviously want to exploit the protests maximum degree possible for their own geopolitical ends.
I think, as your readers would probably agree, this has nothing to do with democracy or human rights or what’s good for the Iranian people. Iran is simply a geopolitical adversary that they want to knock out. I think Trump wants to further destabilize the economic situation.
People can obviously just look at the background. Consider the United States’ “humanitarian intervention” in Libya in 2011. You have a whole class of people in Washington and Israel who cry out for the people of Iran, the people of Libya, the people of Syria, the people of Venezuela, but then, after the geopolitical mission is accomplished, and these “troublesome” governments are knocked out, nobody cares, they move on, they’re not doing anything to help these societies or help them rebuild or unite them.
NATO, led by the United States, intervened in Libya and the country is still in a state of civil war. There’s been war for 15 years. And in Iran, interestingly, you see that the forces that the U.S. and Israel more or less overtly support,
In Iran, you have a diverse cast of characters that are kind of at odds with each other. You have the “nationalists”, the ex-monarchists of the ex-Shah government who have their own view of Iranian nationalism, which is rooted in limited rights for ethnic minorities in Iran.
So I could easily imagine a situation where if the central government in Iran is weakened or collapses, the whole country kind of falls into a state of disarray, instability, and civil war. We’ve seen that playbook elsewhere in the region, but for now, I don’t see any indication that we’re heading in that direction or that Iran is on the verge of such a collapse.
The government is still there. It’s entrenched. They have their base of social support despite the widespread discontent.
I think Trump and Netanyahu’s goal with these kind of threats at this juncture is, again, to destabilize the situation, create unrest and create cover for potential more military escalation within the next weeks to months.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago.
During the meeting, the Israeli leader reportedly pushed the Trump administration to back a second round of strikes on Iran.
In a press conference after the meeting, Trump expressed support for the potential attacks.
“I hope they’re not trying to build up again, because if they are, we’re going to have no choice but very quickly, to eradicate that build up,” said Trump, referring to the alleged expansion of Iran’s ballistic missile program.
“We’ll knock them down,” he added. “We’ll knock the hell out of them.”
Days after the meeting, alluding to the recent domestic protests in Iran, Trump threatened to attack Iran if any protesters were killed.
“If Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
“Trump should know that U.S. interference in this internal matter would mean destabilizing the entire region and destroying America’s interests,” tweeted Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, shortly after. “The American people should know — Trump started this adventurism. They should be mindful of their soldiers’ safety.”
Mondoweiss U.S. correspondent Michael Arria spoke with Center for International Policy Senior Fellow Sina Toossi about these recent events, and whether they signal another potential U.S.-Israeli aggression on Iran on the horizon.
Mondoweiss: What did you make of Trump’s comments on Iran coming out of the meeting with Netanyahu? He seemed ready to back another round of Israeli strikes on Iran.
I think Netanyahu really came to this meeting with multiple demands. It wasn’t just about Iran, but also Gaza, the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire, the situation in Syria, with Lebanon, the issue of continued U.S. aid, and getting a good aid package for Israel in 2026. All of these issues.
On these issues, there are signs of some tension and some differences. We’ll have to see in the coming days and weeks exactly what areas they’re aligned on.
For example, in the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire. If you read the Israeli press, many figures and analysts close to the Netanyahu government are saying they want to have as much freedom of action as possible. They begrudgingly accepted the ceasefire. They don’t want Turkish involvement in the post-war governance. They want a very limited form of post-war governance.
So there are all these differences. Trump, for example, is more supportive of Turkish involvement, and in the meeting, Trump doubled down on supportive comments for [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan. There are all these transactions at play.
Now on the issue of Iran, it seems like, at least rhetorically, Trump made it seem like there’s no daylight between the U.S. and Israel on the issue. Even on missiles, Trump said if they try to reconstitute their missile program, we’ll hit them. If they try to reconstitute their nuclear program, we’ll hit them fast.
So there’s seemingly a harder line on nuclear than missiles, if we’re just going based off the rhetoric. For what it’s worth, there’s a report from Barak Ravid at Axios, where he discusses the differences between the U.S. and Israeli views on what constitutes a reconstitution and the kind of threshold for reconstitution of the nuclear program that would necessitate U.S. support for more strikes.
I would say that Netanyahu’s strategy and his endgame are to have regime change in Iran and for the U.S. to pay the high costs for that, both in terms of defending Israel and supporting offensive strikes against Iran. I think if Israel can get American boots on the ground, it wants them because these issues like destroying the nuclear program, destroying the missile program, they’re not really possible through airstrikes alone.
These places are heavily fortified, they’re dispersed around the country, and they’re often buried underground. You can’t verify the damage you’ve really done.
Netanyahu is now explicitly citing missiles as a pretext for America to go to war with Iran. Centering that is new. I think that’s largely because, politically, Trump has won for himself. He’s told everyone, “I am tough. I destroyed the nuclear program.”
To say the U.S. is going to war six months later? That doesn’t politically play well for Trump and it can get a lot more ugly in the next round.
The ultimate goal is regime change and regime collapse, and getting the U.S. involved in more and more wars against Iran and supporting efforts to destabilize Iran.
That’s the context. I think that we’ll have to see if Trump ultimately gave the green light for renewed strikes at this meeting. It certainly seems like at least a yellow light, if not a green light.
On the other hand, what gives me caution in that regard is that Trump’s preference is to really break Iran while minimizing the U.S. costs. They want to support protests, support unrest, and destabilize the country. I view some of the administration’s rhetoric as more aimed at that.
These protests have broken out in Iran now, and Trump is saying, “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.” I’m not sure this necessarily indicates imminent U.S. intervention. I would say that this is more aimed at further destabilizing the Iranian economy, which is in a state of uncertainty. There’s a lot of economic volatility there.
Trump’s aim is to further destabilize the situation and try to bolster the morale of some of these protesters who may want that support. Although I think the critical mass of Iranians and the social movements it will take to topple the Islamic Republic, don’t want that support.
We know Trump thinks in terms of deals and agreements, and he’s touted this postwar plan for Gaza. How does Iran factor into that vision or potentially impede it?
Since the 90s, Iran’s played the role as a potential spoiler for U.S. and Israeli aims vis-a-vis the Palestinian issue.
Consider the Oslo Accords or the Madrid Conference of 1991. Iran was excluded from these negotiated settlements and acted as a spoiler to increase the cost of its exclusion.
Currently, Iran’s main ally, Hamas, is greatly weakened, as is Hezbollah, but to act like Iran is vulnerable misunderstands the advantage that Iran has in this regard to these conflicts.
At the end of the day, Hamas and Hezbollah were both guerrilla organizations that were entrenched in the local population and boosted by legitimate grievances. Whether people like it or not, these groups have garnered a significant degree of public support.
The reality is, as long as that population is aggrieved and the occupations continue, there will always be support for resistance, and there will always be fertile ground for an outside actor like Iran, Turkey, or Egypt to support these groups.
So you could say, Iran has less influence in Gaza because Hamas has been weakened, or in Lebanon because Hezbollah’s seemingly on the back foot. However, in the longer term picture, there’s going to be more iterations of Palestinian resistance in Gaza, of Shia Lebanese and other forms of resistance in Lebanon.
Iran is doubling down on this kind of resistance access strategy. They’re viewing the fact that Hamas and Hezbollah were weakened, and the fall of Assad, as part of what led to an attack on them. That attack validated their view of strategic depth. They’re not letting up on trying to counterbalance Israel.
I think Israel’s strategic picture is actually much more dire in many ways than it was a couple of years ago. If we talk about before October 7, they were seemingly on the cusp of a grand strategic victory in terms of regional integration with U.S. partners in the Arab world with the Abraham Accords, and they were thinking the Palestinian issue was totally neutered and cast aside. They were moving ahead with their annexation aims.
Since then, yes, they’ve had these tactical military victories, but opposition to Israel is much stronger. The factors behind opposition to Israel in those areas is, if anything, much more strong. When these guerrilla organizations are not given a seat at a table, when the population’s grievances are not taken into account, when the overall structural reasons for these guerrilla organizations existing remains in tact, they are going to remain and gain strength.
Now, contrary to the pre-October 7th reality, normalization with Saudi Arabia seems further than it has been in recent years. Turkey is a much more strategic challenge. Egypt and the Arab world are reacting in ways towards Israel that they haven’t for decades. The prospect of Israeli integration with U.S. partners in the Arab world seems more distant in key ways.
So the picture is not so rosy for the Israelis, I would argue.
Could you discuss the current state of the Iranian leadership? We hear that they’re vulnerable, but we also have people like Netanyahu insisting they’re powerful enough to threaten Israel on some level. How would you assess the current government’s standing on the international stage?
I believe the most significant factor contributing to the instability of the government is the economic situation.
That is the result of, first and foremost, U.S. sanctions. The economic siege has locked Iran out of the international financial monetary system. It can’t repatriate the funds it gets from oil exports as cash reserves for itself.
These protests that broke out last Sunday in parts of the Tehran Bazaar were partially triggered by the economic reality and the depreciation of the currency. There’s also about 40 to 50 percent year-to-year inflation since last year. So there’s the context of more deep-seated and widespread discontent with the government that goes back decades, but there’s definitely an economic spark.
As I mentioned earlier, for something to seriously challenge the Islamic Republic and its political system, I believe a broad, inclusive social movement would be necessary, one that could mobilize a critical mass of Iranians into the streets. These protests have not been that way so far. They began in Tehran, again, with some of the bazaar and certain merchant sectors.
Over the past couple of days, it has largely fizzled out in Tehran, and the government has been repressing the protests. There have been many arrests. In the more rural areas, there have been clashes, violent crackdowns, and a number of deaths.
These protests have ebbed and flowed. To me, what’s more interesting is the evolution of governance styles in Iran, but there’s no doubt that people are aggrieved. These protests are real.
What about those Trump tweets saying the U.S. would come to the protesters’ rescue?
Netanyahu and Trump obviously want to exploit the protests maximum degree possible for their own geopolitical ends.
I think, as your readers would probably agree, this has nothing to do with democracy or human rights or what’s good for the Iranian people. Iran is simply a geopolitical adversary that they want to knock out. I think Trump wants to further destabilize the economic situation.
People can obviously just look at the background. Consider the United States’ “humanitarian intervention” in Libya in 2011. You have a whole class of people in Washington and Israel who cry out for the people of Iran, the people of Libya, the people of Syria, the people of Venezuela, but then, after the geopolitical mission is accomplished, and these “troublesome” governments are knocked out, nobody cares, they move on, they’re not doing anything to help these societies or help them rebuild or unite them.
NATO, led by the United States, intervened in Libya and the country is still in a state of civil war. There’s been war for 15 years. And in Iran, interestingly, you see that the forces that the U.S. and Israel more or less overtly support,
In Iran, you have a diverse cast of characters that are kind of at odds with each other. You have the “nationalists”, the ex-monarchists of the ex-Shah government who have their own view of Iranian nationalism, which is rooted in limited rights for ethnic minorities in Iran.
So I could easily imagine a situation where if the central government in Iran is weakened or collapses, the whole country kind of falls into a state of disarray, instability, and civil war. We’ve seen that playbook elsewhere in the region, but for now, I don’t see any indication that we’re heading in that direction or that Iran is on the verge of such a collapse.
The government is still there. It’s entrenched. They have their base of social support despite the widespread discontent.
I think Trump and Netanyahu’s goal with these kind of threats at this juncture is, again, to destabilize the situation, create unrest and create cover for potential more military escalation within the next weeks to months.
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