Trump or Obama on Uprisings in Iran

Perhaps the animal spirits are stirring. Perhaps the citizens of Iran are watching the liberalization program in Saudi Arabia and asking themselves: Why not us? Perhaps these same Iranians believe that whereas the Obama administration sat back and let them die, the Trump administration will be less cowardly.

Then again, we note that the Iranian regime recently decided to stop arresting women who did not wear any head covering. Perhaps, it saw the rebellion happening and wanted to forestall it.

Sky News reports:

Hundreds of people took to the streets in Mashhad, Iran's second-largest city and one of the holiest places in Shia Islam, on Thursday.

The protests spread to Tehran and other cities on Friday, with police using water cannons in some cases to disperse the crowds.

Initially aimed against high prices, the anti-government protests quickly turned against the Islamic regime as a whole.

Another reason might be that the people of Iran, having learned that the tons of cash sent by the Obama administration to empower the Islamist tyranny was being used to support terrorism, by the Houthis and by Hezbollah.

Roger Simon explained:

What we do know is that these demonstrators are complaining that money garnered from the Iran nuclear deal is not going to them, the Iranian people, to make their lives better, as promised, but to carry out the mullahs' murderous military adventures across the Middle East. Was anything ever more predictable?

As you know, in Iran it’s déjà vu all over again. The Iranian people rose up against their tyrannical dictators in 2009. The Obama administration did nothing and said nothing. Presumably, it was lusting after a nuclear deal, one that could empower the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, and a sworn enemy of the United States and Israel.

When people protested the Mubarak regime in Egypt and the Qaddhafi regime in Libya, the same Obama administration was happy to bring them both down. After all, they were, at least putative American allies. Which made them expendable. 

Besides, the Iranian regime holds fast to values that the Obama administration held dear. Don’t you think?

Simon said:

Boy, was I wrong and never was that more clear than in 2009 when the Green Movement demonstrators were marching through the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities, demanding freedom from the mullahs. The whole world was watching, as we used to say in the sixties, only their cause was purer than ours was then. The horrifying theocrats who ran the "Islamic Republic" regularly raped women in prison before they killed them, hanged homosexuals in the streets and tortured just about everyone else who didn't comply with the edicts of their Islamofascist regime.

Where were all the pillars of leftist thought when a fascist regime was raping women, murdering homosexuals, and torturing everyone who did not comply with the regime? Where were the feminists? Where were the gay rights activists?

They all sat it out. They said nothing. Their weakness was grotesque. Perhaps they were so enthralled by the image of their very own Messiah, Barack Obama, that they were unwilling to launch the least critical word in his direction. They should stop lecturing people about their moral values and should stop portraying themselves as foes of fascism.

Perhaps a president can do nothing more than speak out. We are not going to send the 82^nd Airborne to Tehran. And yet, speaking out is the least a president can do. And, happily enough for American moral character, President Donald Trump and the American State Department have been speaking out against the ayatollahs and their oppressive tactics toward protesters. Shining the light of justice on the regime cannot hurt. Seeing the president and the Secretary of State articulating the same policy is, at the least, refreshing.

Last night, Trump tweeted:

Many reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with regime’s corruption & its squandering of the nation’s wealth to fund terrorism abroad. Iranian govt should respect their people’s rights, including right to express themselves. The world is watching! 

People who followed Obama off a moral cliff and who see themselves as brave fighters against fascism are now at war with Donald Trump.

Go figure.