The theocracy in Tehran has a bad situation on its hands. The currency’s in a tailspin and locals have taken to the streets in protest, conjuring memories of 2019’s mass demonstrations which left hundreds dead.

Donald Trump — a man who’s quite adept at making bad situations worse both for himself and others — has it out for the regime, and while you can argue his actions vis-à-vis Iran count as reckless, his instincts were right to the extent he saw a paper tiger.

Trump did all three things a risk averse president wouldn’t dare do: He abandoned the JCPOA, he assassinated Qassem Soleimani and he bombed Iran’s nuclear sites. Each of those provocations could’ve very plausibly been described ahead of time as a risk not worth taking. But as it turns out, Iran was (almost) all bark and no bite.

Ironically, it was Trump who spared the regime a death blow when, on June 24, he all but commandeered the Israeli military command to prevent a series of airstrikes poised to further cripple an already degraded (not to mention thoroughly humiliated) IRGC.

Simply put: Were it not for Trump, Israel might’ve well killed Khamenei and everyone in his inner-circle over the summer, leaving the fate of the country to chance.

Fast forward six months and there’s no clear path forward for the regime. Its capacity to project through the regional proxy network Soleimani painstakingly built is gone, its missile arsenal’s depleted, its air defenses remain hopelessly inadequate and its nuclear program, to the extent it still exists, was forced even further underground.

Although Khamenei will surely endeavor to crush any popular uprising that threatens to topple the government, this really isn’t the time to be killing democracy advocates in full view of the world. That’d be an invitation for additional foreign intervention, sanctions on anything that isn’t already sanctioned and, who knows, could serve as an excuse for joint US-Israel strikes to “protect democratic freedoms” (or something).

And so it was that Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian apologized Tuesday for the free-falling rial. “The livelihood of the people is my daily concern,” he said, promising “fundamental action [to] reform the monetary and banking system and preserve purchasing power.”

In the same message, Pezeshkian said the protesters have “legitimate demands” which should be addressed by the government “through dialogue to resolve problems.” That, as opposed to “resolving” the people’s “problems” by beating them over the head with batons until they sing the praises of the Revolution.

Later, though, Pezeshkian warned of a “harsh” response in the event Iran were subjected to “any oppressive aggression,” a thinly-veiled reference to Trump’s characteristically bombastic remarks delivered on Monday at Mar-a-Lago where he hosted Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We’ll knock the hell out of them,” Trump said, imagining a scenario in which the IRGC attempts to reconstitute its missile program. “But hopefully that’s not happening,” he added.

It’s not a stretch — at all — to suggest the CIA and Mossad are active on the ground in Iran attempting to fan the flames of popular discontent. Over the past year and half, Israel’s shown Iran to be almost totally derelict in the counter-intelligence department.

Following Pezeshkian’s conciliatory rhetoric, which included allusions to scrapping a planned tax hike, instituting larger pay increases for pensioners and public workers and providing for more subsidies, protest activity around the Grand Bazaar was more subdued, even as students at the University of Tehran braved a beating from secret police with anti-regime chants.

Meanwhile, Isaac Herzog was compelled to refute Trump’s account of a phone call during which, according to Trump, Herzog said a pardon for Netanyahu on corruption charges is “on its way.”

“There has not been a conversation between President Herzog and President Trump since the pardon request was submitted,” Herzog’s office said.