The White House has let it be known that President Donald Trump has been briefed on options for military strikes in Iran. This is a message, not only to the theocrats in Tehran but to the rest of us. He wants us to believe he’s about to rescue Iran’s protesters.

For days, the president has issued increasingly bellicose warnings toward Tehran as protests have convulsed the Islamic Republic. "Locked and loaded,” he has warned. America will “come to their rescue” if the regime keeps killing demonstrators. Iran is “in big trouble.” We will be “hitting them very very hard where it hurts.”

Strong words. The kind that play well on cable news and social media. Part of this is Trump being Trump—bluster as policy. But part of it is a president determined to be different from his predecessors. Obama engaged and retreated. Biden dithered.

Trump wants to be the one who acted. His tough rhetoric raises expectations among Iranians risking their lives, among Gulf allies watching nervously, among those in Trump’s circle who are urging him to action. The problem? Trump doesn’t have good options. He doesn’t even have mediocre ones. What he has are three paths forward, each worse than the last.

Scenario one: the symbolic strike

Hit some barracks of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Destroy a naval facility in the Gulf. Take out a command center. Enough to say we did something. Not enough to start a war. I have covered enough of these “messaging strikes” to know the script. They satisfy the political imperative to act. They give the president his talking points. They let everyone move on. They also accomplish nothing.

A few destroyed buildings won’t stop the Basij—a militia that works with Iran’s security forces—from dragging young women into vans. They won’t halt the executions that follow these protests. They won’t deter Ali Khamenei—who has survived far worse than American airstrikes—from crushing this uprising with whatever force necessary.

Worse, a calibrated strike demoralizes the very people Trump claims to support. They have heard his soaring rhetoric about rescue and American power. When the follow-through is a single night of explosions followed by business as usual, the message becomes brutally clear: You are on your own.

Meanwhile, the regime spins the attack as proof of foreign conspiracy, rallying whatever remains of its base while tightening the noose on dissent. I have watched this playbook unfold before. It doesn’t end well for protesters.

There is also a practical problem Trump may not grasp: America doesn’t have the carrier strike groups positioned in the Gulf like it had in June. Right now, not a single U.S. carrier is patrolling the Persian Gulf. Any operation would depend on long-range assets or bases in countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.

And here is the kicker: those Gulf allies have already told Trump they want no part of strikes on Iran. They watched Iranian missiles hit Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar back in June. They know their oil infrastructure, their cities, their economic lifelines sit exposed. When Washington comes asking for basing rights, expect polite refusals.

Scenario two: decapitation

If Trump considers symbolic strikes as too weak and considers assassinating Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Target the Supreme Leader and senior Revolutionary Guards commanders. Trigger a power vacuum. Let events take their course. It is seductive in its simplicity—the kind of idea that sounds brilliant in a 2 a.m. White House situation room. Remove the tyrant, democracy flowers. America gets the credit.

Here is what actually happens when you decapitate authoritarian regimes: the guys with guns take over. In Iran, the most organized, best-armed, most cohesive force isn’t the protesters or some nascent democratic movement. It is the IRGC, with roughly 190,000 personnel across ground, naval, and air branches. A decapitation strike doesn’t eliminate the IRGC—it sets off a scramble for power in which they start with every advantage.

The likeliest outcome? A military junta consolidates control, purges unreliable elements, then—this is the depressing part—reaches out to Washington to cut a deal. They’d negotiate on the nuclear program. Scale back regional adventurism. Do whatever it takes to preserve their wealth and power. For the protesters, this would be bitter irony: America intervenes on their behalf, only to midwife a regime more brutal and efficient than the clerical one it replaced.

There’s also the small matter of actually finding Khamenei. The 86-year-old doesn’t keep regular office hours. Any strike would depend on intelligence of uncertain quality, with civilians in the blast radius and no guarantee of success. Miss, and you’ve enraged the regime while demonstrating American impotence. I remember when the U.S. tried to kill Saddam Hussein in the opening hours of the Iraq War. We were very confident about that intelligence too.

Scenario three: the sustained campaign

The middle path: a sustained aerial campaign to degrade Iran’s security apparatus. Not symbolic, not decapitation, but methodical strikes to make repression harder. Hit their command centers. Destroy weapons depots. Disrupt communications. Give protesters a fighting chance.

It is the option that looks like doing something serious without putting boots on the ground. It would inflict damage. But here is the paradox: the more successful the campaign, the greater the risk of chaos. Destroy enough of Iran’s security apparatus and you don’t get a peaceful transition to democracy. You get Libya. You get Yemen. You get ethnic and regional fissures tearing an 80-million-person country apart, with no organized opposition ready to fill the void and plenty of armed groups eager to try.

Iran’s opposition is weak, divided, largely in exile. Inside the country, decades of repression have destroyed the parties, unions, and civil society organizations that might provide an alternative to theocratic rule. There are brave individuals willing to die for change. Bravery isn’t a blueprint for governance.

Many Iranians who despise the regime also remember what happened when centralized states collapsed in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. They know the price of chaos. They are not eager to pay it. A sustained campaign also runs into those same logistical constraints: limited bases, skeptical allies, and an Iran with demonstrated capacity to hit back at American troops in Iraq, at shipping in the Gulf, at partners across the region.

The uncomfortable truth

Strip away the rhetoric and what remains is simple: there is no military option that delivers what Trump has promised. The symbolic strike is too weak to matter. Decapitation risks installing a junta. The sustained campaign courts state collapse and regional conflagration.

This doesn’t mean Trump won’t act. Political pressure, personal instinct, and the logic of his own promises may push him toward some form of military action. But those hoping for a decisive intervention that tips the balance toward freedom will be disappointed.

Iran’s future won’t be decided by American cruise missiles. It will be decided by the young woman who refuses to cover her hair. By the factory worker who joins the strike. By the mid-level bureaucrat who finally decides the cost of complicity is too high. It will be decided by Iranians themselves, through a grinding contest of will, courage, and endurance that no external power can shortcut.

Washington can help at the margins: targeted sanctions, technology to bypass internet blackouts, diplomatic pressure. What it cannot do is deliver liberation from the sky. Trump would do well to learn this lesson before his rhetoric writes checks that American power cannot cash. The protesters deserve better than empty promises. And America deserves better than another Middle Eastern misadventure born of good intentions and magical thinking.