President Trump Promises Support to the Iranian People, Not the Islamic Regime
(This post originally appeared on the Patheos Faith & Chelsen blog on January 3, 2018, and is reprinted with permission.)
It seems that God has given America a second chance to respond to cries for freedom in Iran. Crowds of Iranians are in the streets, as they were during the Green Revolution. Once again they are protesting against the repressive Islamic regime, as they did in 2009. The people of Iran are showing that they don’t want to be ruled by a brutal theocracy.
In June 2009 the Iranian people took to the streets protesting the presidential election stolen by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Dozens were killed and hundreds were arrested. The Obama administration opted to support the Islamist leaders rather than speak out about those leaders’ treatment of women and their persecution of Christians, Jews, Baha’i, Zoroastrians, and others. The President was silent as the regime crushed the protesters and the people of Iran demanded, “Obama, Obama, are you with them, or with us?”
Coincidentally, a week into the protests, the unforgettable film The Stoning of Soroya M (Cyrus Nowrasteh, director) was released in the United States. This true story of a young Iranian wife and mother who is stoned when falsely accused of adultery by her pond scum of a husband revealed not just the monstrous violence of Sharia, but the disgusting hypocrisy of those who practice it.
Some of us thought that maybe if the American public were more aware of what it was exactly that the Iranian people were protesting against, we could shock people into action. Perhaps a greater clamor could pressure President Obama to support the people.
We took to the street – the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street, NW in Georgetown, to be specific – and handed out flyers about the film with talking points about Iran. But we were not successful. And the brave protestors in Iran continued for months…while knowing that they were alone. America did not have their backs.
Will we get it right this time? Will we help the Iranians to bring freedom to their nation? President Trump and Vice President Pence have both expressed solidarity with the protesters. But words are not enough. Some reports indicate that the Trump Administration has more in mind than words. The Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo wrote in an exclusive on Tuesday, January 2:
“President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are said to be closely monitoring the situation and working to warn Iran’s ruling regime that “this will not be a repeat of the 2009 demonstrations,” according to a senior administration official briefed on the situation.
Kredo reported the words of a senior administration official, “President Trump and Vice President Pence are making clear to the world that they will not turn their backs on the freedom-seeking protesters.”
Israeli writer Caroline Glick reveals how important it would be for there to be freedom in Iran. In The Jerusalem Post on New Year’s Day she said, “If the Iranian regime is unable to brutally stomp out the countrywide protests raging through the country, and if the protesters achieve their goal of bringing down the regime, they will go down in history as the saviors of millions of people not just in Iran but throughout the world.”
She is, of course, correct. The freedom of Iran, or alternately, the continued repression of Iran with Islamist theocracy by supremacist Ayatollahs, has repercussions on other nations far and wide. Her own nation of Israel, of course, being the one that most people think of first. But the effort to Caliphatize (I know it’s not a word, but I am using it anyway) the globe would get a huge setback if the Iranian regime got the boot.
Then there’s that whole nuclear weapons aspect. Glick and others, including former Israel Ambassador to the United Nations, Michael Oren, have pointed out that the US blew our first chance to get it right on Iran in large part because of President Obama’s obsession with making a nuclear deal with the Iranian regime. Make it he did. But said deal left the world more vulnerable to a nuclear threat from the Iranian regime than ever.
From the onset of his presidency, Obama chose the nuclear option with Iran over all else. The unobtainable goal of making the regime an ally took priority over helping the people of Iran to bring freedom and democracy.
And, adds Glick, Obama’s foreign policy was based on his “assumption that the US was a colonialist, aggressive and immoral superpower.” God forbid any nation should want to be like America! The people of Iran admire Western culture? Especially America? Nip that in the bud, even if it means blood running in the streets of Tehran! And so it did.
Glick shows that the Deep-Staties and their paramours in the media are doing everything they can now to downplay the significance of the brave Persian people standing up in the face of repression and violence once again. These breathtaking paragons of globalist virtue are all “advising” President Trump to be quiet, not support the anti-regime activity.
Glick also reveals that no top European leader expressed solidarity with or encouragement to the hundreds of thousands of protestors. Only British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson made a “lukewarm statement” on twitter, five days into the protesting. I would hope that at least the Eastern Europeans would cheer on this new incarnation of the Green Revolution. Eastern Europe knows about this sort of standing up with no one to help you, from Yalta, to Budapest, to Prague, and beyond – and have heard the deafening silence of ‘friends.’
But – back to God. The regime is brutal and systematic in its persecution of Christians. The Islamists – quite rightly – see Jesus as a Big Threat! They supposed that imprisoning and killing the top leaders of the churches would cause the Church in Iran to fall apart. So over several decades they have killed a number of the top Christian leaders in the country. And they have imprisoned hundreds of church members in such places as the terrible Evin Prison.
But the Church in Iran has continued to grow because it is not humans but Christ that leads the Church. And not just the “official” church. Iranian Muslims are having visions and dreams of Jesus and coming to faith in Him with nary a pastor in sight. Reports also indicate that young Muslims are disillusioned with Islam and find that Christianity offers them “joy, hope, and love.” The US Commission on International Religious Freedom estimates Iran’s Christian population at some 300,000. But there may be as many as a million Christians in Iran, according to other reports.
If the people are able to free themselves from the political, theological, and – let’s face it – all encompassing oppression under which they have suffered since the Iranian Revolution, a liberated Iran could have a strong and vibrant civil society, including the large no-longer-under-threat Christian community, to help guide it aright. And many other countries around the world could breathe easy. Because, as Glick pointed out, “Every day the Iranian regime remains in place, it will use its power to continue its direct and indirect wars against its enemies in the Middle East and throughout the world.”
Most certainly, in supporting the Iranian people in their quest for freedom, President Trump is choosing the wisest option. Even the wisest nuclear option.
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