Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Trump’s tack on Iran seen as risky
As protests go on, president’s backing could backfire
WASHINGTON — On issues from climate change to health care, there are few things President Donald Trump relishes more than doing the opposite of something his predecessor did. Now an eruption of antigovernment protests across Iran — the biggest in nearly a decade in the Islamic Republic — offers him another way to set himself apart from President Barack Obama.
But it’s a path strewn with foreign policy pitfalls as well as potential opportunities.
Iran’s leaders already are casting Trump’s expressions of support for the demonstrators as opportunistic meddling and are painting the demonstrators as foreign pawns, adopting a strategy that some analysts say could jeopardize the legitimacy of the nascent anti-government protests.
Trump’s volley of tweets, hailing the protests only hours after they broke out Thursday night, contrasted with Obama’s more muted initial response to the 2009 wave of unrest that followed the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Obama eventually toughened his rhetoric in response to a crackdown by authorities in Tehran. But he also spoke of wanting to “avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran.” Trump has shown few such qualms, tweeting about the protests for three days straight as Iranians took to the streets despite a heavy police presence and scores of arrests. The defiance gained urgency after two people were reported shot to death in Dorud, southwest of Tehran.
“Big protests in Iran,” the president tweeted Sunday from his resort in Florida. “The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer.”
The protests continued unabated Sunday, despite a government move to block access to Instagram and a popular messaging app used by activists to organize, with even President Hassan Rouhani acknowledging the public’s anger over the Islamic Republic’s flagging economy. Rouhani and other leaders made a point to warn that the government wouldn’t hesitate to crack down on those it considers lawbreakers.
“Those who misused cyberspace and spread violence are absolutely known to us and we will definitely confront them,” Iranian Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said on state television.
Supporters of the president, who has long called Tehran a threat to the world, consider the protests as something of a vindication of his views.
A fierce opponent of the 2015 nuclear disarmament deal that six world powers negotiated with Iran, Trump has rarely missed an opportunity to denounce the government for testing ballistic missiles and backing Shiite militant groups across the Middle East.
Anti-government demonstrations are rare in Iran. In this case, economic resentment was the trigger for what was initially a scattered round of unauthorized protests in a country suffering high unemployment, rising prices and endemic corruption.
But as the demonstrations spread, the message became more broadly political, according to videos shared on social media. Some featured what would previously have been unthinkable displays of defiance, such as tearing down posters of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Both Trump and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, cited human rights considerations in backing the protest movement — even as critics quickly noted that the Trump administration has voiced little support for human rights elsewhere.
“The USA is watching closely for human rights violations!” Trump tweeted Sunday. Haley, in a statement, said the Iranian government was being “tested by its own citizens.”
Views are divided on whether Trump’s embrace will help or hurt those challenging the clerics.
Suzanne Maloney, deputy director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution, said Trump’s endorsement could appear a “kiss of death,” giving the government a convenient way to discredit the protests.
But writing on Twitter, Maloney also pointed to a “compelling US interest in embracing popular efforts to curtail authoritarianism in the Middle East.”
Even some Trump allies, however, say his backing of the Iranian dissenters might not amount to much unless he articulates a more coherent policy toward Tehran.
“President Trump is tweeting very sympathetically to the Iranian people,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS.C., said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” but added: “You can’t just tweet here — you have to lay out a plan.”
For its part, Iran is quick to fall back on past insults to galvanize national pride.
In comments published Sunday — his first since the protests began — Rouhani made scathing reference to Trump’s remarks at the U.N. General Assembly in September, when the president denounced Iran as a “rogue nation.”
“This gentleman who today sympathizes with our people a few months ago called us a terrorist nation, and from head to toe has been against Iran,” Rouhani said.
Laura King reported from Washington and Alexandra Zavis from Beirut. Staff writer Tracy Wilkinson contributed from Washington. Associated Press also contributed.