Trump backs Iran protesters, hits Obama for nuclear deal
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Protests across Iran saw their most violent night as “armed protesters†tried to overrun military bases and police stations before security forces repelled them, killing 10 people, Iranian state television said Monday.
Time
WASHINGTON – Facing a new and sudden foreign policy challenge as protests flare in Iran, President Trump began his 2018 by expressing support for the anti-government activists while criticizing the approach taken by predecessor Barack Obama.
“The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime,” Trump tweeted Tuesday, the morning after he returned to the White House from an end-of-the-year vacation at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.
The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their “pockets.†The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018
Objecting to the nuclear agreement that the Obama administration struck with Iran in 2015, Trump went on to say that “all of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their ‘pockets.’ The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!”
Protesters in Iran hit the streets for a fifth day on Monday, criticizing the economy and lack of political freedoms from the Islamic leadership in Tehran. While President Hassan Rouhani called for calm, Iran security forces have arrested people and are vowing further crackdowns.
At least 20Â people have died and 450 people arrested in clashes between police and protesters.
More: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini blames ‘enemies’ for meddling in protests
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini has accused the country’s enemies of seeking “to create problems for the Islamic system,” though he has not named names.
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Trump has long attacked the Obama-era agreement with Iran in which the U.S. and allies reduced economic sanctions as the Tehran government gave up the means to make nuclear weapons. While international monitors say Iran is complying with the agreement, Trump has threatened to withdraw the United States if Congress does not make improvements.
Obama aides said the agreement has encouraged Iranians to speak out against their repressive government.
“The Iranian people are rightfully demanding dignity, less corruption, more opportunity, and greater control over their lives,” Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes tweeted out Sunday. “In looking at U.S. Twitter, it seems lost on too many that this is about what Iranians want for Iran, and not about us.”
Trump’s aggressive approach to Iran – he openly called for regime change in a New Year’s Day tweet – is contrast to the more cautious comments made by Obama and his aides during their administration.
Iran is failing at every level despite the terrible deal made with them by the Obama Administration. The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years. They are hungry for food for freedom. Along with human rights, the wealth of Iran is being looted. TIME FOR CHANGE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2018
Amid similar protests on Iranian streets in 2009, Obama did back demonstrators’ demands for a more open society, and condemned violence perpetrated by the government. But he did so in a more low-key way, concerned that the Iran regime would accuse the United States of meddling in the country’s affairs and mount an anti-American campaign to rally its supporters.
“I want to start off by being very clear that it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be, that we respect Iranian sovereignty,” Obama told reporters in 2009, adding that “sometimes the United States can be a handy political football.”
Islamic fundamentalists did that very thing in seizing power from the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran in 1979, making “Death To America” a theme of their revolution.
Much of Trump’s foreign policy – including withdrawal from a global climate change agreement to recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital to Iran policy – seems driven by “domestic politics” and the desire “to demonstrate, ‘I am not Obama,'” said Aaron David Miller, a Middle East adviser to past Republican and Democratic administrations.
Trump tweets about Iran won’t have much influence by themselves, foreign policy analysts said, in part because relatively little is known about the protesters or how the government will react.
“Our capacity to shape events … is very, very limited,” Miller said.
Other aspects of Trump’s foreign policy may make it more difficult for the administration’s ability to get other countries to confront Iran, analysts said, including the president’s criticism of international agreements – from trade deals to the nuclear deal with Iran that is still backed by European allies.
Some of those allies fear that Iran may well seek nuclear weapons if the U.S.-backed agreement falls apart.
Iran isn’t the only exercise in nuclear diplomacy Trump is pursuing. He is also trying to get other countries to apply economic pressure to North Korea in hopes it will give up its nuclear weapons, another topic the president tweeted about Tuesday.Â
Sanctions and “other†pressures are beginning to have a big impact on North Korea. Soldiers are dangerously fleeing to South Korea. Rocket man now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not – we will see!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018
David Rothkopf, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said Iran presents a moment in which “engaged leadership by a U.S. committed to effective, forceful diplomacy is vital.”
But that “is not an option given Trump, the gutting of the State Department and his alienation of allies through policies like the threat to bolt from the Iran deal,” Rothkopf said. “While the tweets may help, mildly, they also reveal the inherent and growing weakness of U.S. foreign policy at the moment.”
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