President Trump expressed his approval in favor of a burgeoning Iranian revolution, which has set itself up in opposition to the ruling order. According to the current Republican foreign policy consensus, “this will not be a repeat of the 2009 demonstrations”.
A number of protestors have died during the protest already, an event that the Iranian government has blamed on the US’s encouragement of the protests. A senior administration official mentioned that “While Obama administration officials continue to double down on its failed, passive approach to past freedom uprisings in Iran, President Trump and Vice President Pence are making clear to the world that they will not turn their backs on the freedom-seeking protesters,” he further reported that another nine protesters were killed and at least 450 arrested.
The representative further added, “The Trump administration’s strong and vocal support for the demonstrators is a 180 from the Obama administration’s approach and it’s signaling to Tehran that this will not be a repeat of the 2009 demonstrations,”.
General Ramezan Sharif suggested, “Overt and covert support of the U.S., the Zionist regime and Saudi Arabia for the rioters and vandals helped the Iranian people differentiate between the peaceful protesters and the foreign-stimulated rioters,”. Sharif is Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)’s spokesman.
Vice President Mike Pence responded, saying, “As long as [Trump] is [President] and I am [Vice President], the United States of America will not repeat the shameful mistake of our past when others stood by and ignored the heroic resistance of the Iranian people as they fought against their brutal regime.”
Pence further claimed that the Obama administration just watched the tumult in 2009 from the side lines and that he supports “all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties, and rule of law.”
“If you want to understand how totally different the Trump approach is from Obama’s, all you have to notice is that Democrats aren’t even pretending Obama would have done this” said a source.
“Usually, when the president shows leadership, the noise machine spins up and says he’s just doing what Obama would have done,” the source said. “But in this case everyone knows that Obama abandoned the protesters in Iran in 2009 because he wanted a nuclear deal, and he would do it again.”