Furious over botched ‘regime change’ plot, Trump threatens Iran’s trade partners with 25% tariff

US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose an additional 25-percent tariff on countries doing business with Iran, after plots led by Washington and its arch-ally, the Israeli regime, failed to derail economic protests inside the Islamic Republic towards "regime change."

Donald Trump made the announcement in a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday, saying the tariffs were “effective immediately.”

He did not outline which countries could be affected or how the tariff would be implemented, but observers cited China as the most obvious target of the measure in light of the sheer size of its USD-billions-strong annual trade with the Islamic Republic.

The announcement came after Trump threatened Iran with fresh military aggression in response to what he called Tehran’s confrontation against economic protests.

Following the threat, Washington- and Tel Aviv-backed riotous elements infiltrated the protests, began targeting public property, aimed live fire at protesters, and even distributed firearms among them, as confirmed by the Islamic Republic’s intelligence organizations.

Also on Monday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi verified during a meeting with Tehran-based diplomats that recordings had proven how these elements had been trying to cause as many casualties as possible to try to pave the way for renewed foreign aggression against the Iranian territory.

This was, however, soon met by Iranian officials’ promptly warning the nation about the trend, and Iranian security forces’ rounding up several riot ringleaders and establishing links between them and foreign intelligence agencies.

Earlier, millions of Iranians took to the streets to display their solidarity with the nation’s Islamic establishment, which has vowed to duly address existing economic problems, but, at the same time, decisively confront efforts at sedition and sowing unrest.

Observers, meanwhile, noted that the new tariffs announced by Trump and their clear aim to disrupt trade between Iran and China came at a time when the US was trying to regain control of oil reserves in Venezuela, China’s biggest crude supplier.

The American drive follows the US forces’ kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, an illegal move under international law, which many identified as an effort by Washington to target China’s oil imports, besides being aimed at regional interference.

The 25-percent tariff is expected to refuel the Sino-American trade standoff.

The standoff had barely been offered a respite in May, when the two sides agreed to drop triple-digit tariffs on each other’s goods that had nearly stopped trade between the world’s two biggest economies.

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