Governing by tweet: The human cost of unpredictable U.S. foreign policy

To be Iranian today, whether inside Iran or watching from abroad, is to live with extraordinary uncertainty. That uncertainty does not stem solely from the actions of the Iranian regime, but also from the unpredictability of international responses to it, particularly those of the United States.

For millions of Iranians, U.S. foreign policy is not an abstract debate or a matter of partisan preference. It is a question of personal safety, imprisonment or worse. Words spoken by American leaders can raise hope, alter behavior and provoke retaliation. They carry real consequences for people with no margin for error.

In the last month, American foreign policy toward Iran has increasingly been communicated in fragments, often through public statements or social media posts that appear uncoordinated, quickly revised or quietly abandoned. Hope arrives via tweets. So does confusion. So does risk.

A single statement suggesting support for the Iranian people can embolden protestors or signal pressure on the regime. But when that statement is later walked back, contradicted or left unexplained, those same individuals may be left exposed. In Iran, expectations raised publicly cannot be safely undone.

This is not strategic ambiguity. Strategic ambiguity is deliberate, disciplined and carefully calibrated. What Iranians are witnessing instead often feels improvisational, with policy signals emerging before they have been fully analyzed, vetted or aligned with institutional consensus.

Supporters may argue that unpredictability itself is a strategy, that pressure applied inconsistently can still yield leverage, or that unconventional approaches sometimes succeed where traditional diplomacy has failed. History does offer occasional examples where disorder produces unexpected openings.

But for those living under repression, the distinction between strategy and impulse is not academic.

When American leaders speak casually about intervention, negotiations or "standing with the Iranian people," those words reverberate far beyond Washington. They echo into interrogation rooms and court proceedings. They shape decisions made by people who will bear the consequences long after attention has moved elsewhere.

False or fragile hope is not harmless. It can be destabilizing. And when delivered without institutional discipline, it risks doing more harm than good.

Foreign policy is not a forum for thinking out loud. It is an exercise in consequence management. Serious governments test ideas privately so that public statements mean something. When meaning becomes optional, credibility erodes, and those most affected pay the price.

But past U.S. inaction has been so dispiriting that Iranians are willing to grasp even this fragile hope and unpredictable "strategy," at all costs to them, simply because it represents something rather than nothing. During the Green Movement in 2009, when millions protested a disputed presidential election and demanded democratic accountability, security forces killed at least dozens of demonstrators and arrested thousands, while many waited in vain for meaningful international engagement from the Obama administration. When nationwide protests followed the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, after she was detained by Iran's morality police, the crackdown was even more severe, with hundreds killed and tens of thousands arrested, while the Biden administration issued statements of concern but took no tangible action. Earlier protests, including those during the first Trump administration, when economic pressure and internal unrest sparked demonstrations across Iran, followed a similar pattern, attention, rhetoric and eventual retreat.

The lesson Iranians learned was consistent: do not expect much, and do not expect it to last.

This week, however, President Trump has gone farther, rhetorically, than any careful president before him. Through public posts declaring that the United States was "locked and loaded and ready to go" if Iran killed peaceful protesters and that "help is on the way" to Iranians suffering under brutal repression, he has projected a level of immediacy and potential intervention that prior administrations avoided. At the same time, on Jan. 12 he indicated that a meeting with Iranian officials was being arranged after Iran reportedly reached out to negotiate, saying that "a meeting is being set up," while also warning that the United States might act first if the violence continued. The next day, he announced in a Truth Social post that he had canceled those meetings, stating that talks would not occur unless Iran stopped killing its own people, and adding, "HELP IS ON ITS WAY." Taken together, the rapid shift from announcing talks to canceling them while simultaneously threatening action and promising assistance underscores how confusing and destabilizing this messaging has been for Iranians trying to discern whether a coherent policy exists at all.

Against the backdrop of utter inaction by previous presidents, even inconsistent attention from this White House can feel different and is welcomed. Even confusing signals can register as movement. Even the possibility, however accidental, that pressure might materialize feels novel. That is not an endorsement of disorder. It is an indictment of how low expectations have been set.

History is rarely tidy. Sometimes chaotic actions land in ways their authors did not intend. Sometimes pressure, even imperfectly applied, creates space. Iranians can acknowledge that possibility while still recognizing the risks.

But hope built on accident is a fragile thing.

And yet many Iranians will accept even fragile hope, at all costs, because it is more than they have been offered before. That reality should trouble American policymakers. It suggests not success, but a long record of disengagement that has conditioned people to accept uncertainty as progress.

As Washington debates the merits of unconventional diplomacy, Iranians are left deciphering whether today's statement signals real commitment or is simply another passing remark, one that will fade after the damage is done.