Imagine the courage Iranians need to roar in 72 cities: \u201cDeath to the dictator\u201d \u2026 \u201cIranians, raise your voice, shout out for your rights,\u201d or \u201cPalestine and Gaza,\u201d sacrifice (both) for Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n
Imagine how betrayed these dissidents feel when Western reporters, students, professors, and the Brits ignore them, and streets worldwide remain quiet – while many seem angrier at President Donald Trump for attacking a corrupt, anti-democratic Venezuelan narco-terrorist than Iran\u2019s anti-democratic mullahs. Moreover, how could the Iranian citizens\u2019 noble fight against a repressive, homophobic, sexist, anti-American theocracy be met with yawns, while democratic Israel\u2019s heroic acts of self-defense trigger worldwide protests?<\/p>\n
Right now, Jewish activists and liberty-lovers globally should have one priority: supporting the Iranian people\u2019s push for freedom – doggedly and creatively. Although success isn\u2019t guaranteed, it\u2019s testing everyone\u2019s moral fiber. Considering how much safer the world would be if these protests were to produce a democratic or merely inward-looking Iran, there\u2019s only one path ahead. Every responsible global citizen should ask: \u201cWhat can I, any organizations I belong to, my community, and my country do to make this happen?\u201d<\/p>\n
The stakes here are sky-high \u2013 for Iran, for Israel, for Jews, for America, and for the world. Iran\u2019s totalitarian mullahs and Revolutionary Guards have spent 47 years persecuting any doubters, along with free spirits resisting Islamist coercion, including people who are gay, feminists, or simply young girls who dare walk around without head coverings. As Iran\u2019s economy collapsed, even water and oil became scarce. Yet these self-destructive haters kept bankrolling bad actors everywhere, especially Iran\u2019s \u201cring of fire\u201d around Israel, from Hamas to Hezbollah to the Houthis to Palestinian terrorists.<\/p>\n
Their bank-breaking, ultimately futile, missile program and rush to go nuclear threatened Israel, which it terms \u201cLittle Satan.\u201d But it endangers \u201cBig Satan\u201d \u2013 America – and the entire West too. Meanwhile, deploying terrorist proxies, Iran exported its reign of terror worldwide, targeting Jews and other innocents.<\/p>\n
If Westerners had a healthy desire for self preservation or moral clarity, undermining the Iranian regime would be a lockstep political cause, uniting the Left and Right. Instead, it\u2019s a sidestep issue. Few defend this abominable regime, but the bovine majority won\u2019t stand up to facilitate change and demand that their governments defend democracy proudly and proactively. We\u2019re not passive bystanders. We can help. America and its allies can impose more sanctions, tightening the economic screws. They should deploy satellite technology enabling Iranian protesters to communicate freely, rather than being thwarted when the regime shuts down internet interaction.<\/p>\n
They can fill Iranian smartphones with protestors\u2019 messages while launching cyberattacks that crash Iranian infrastructure, further exposing the dictatorship\u2019s incompetence. And beyond lobbying for these actions, Westerners should take to the streets, creating global displays of solidarity with these Iranian heroes. Such support will embolden Iran\u2019s activists who need to hear: \u201cWe\u2019ve got your backs!\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, an unconscionable silence muffles the immobilized moral minority. My always-astute Jerusalem Post colleague Herb Keinon noted on Friday: \u201cThe New York Times did not have a single article about the protests on its front page this week.\u201d There was \u201cnot even a blurb at the bottom of the front page where articles on the inside pages are promoted.\u201d In today\u2019s polarized politics, fighting Iran is frequently miscast as a Right versus Left issue – its right versus wrong.<\/p>\n
Shortly before attacking Venezuela, which should unnerve Iran\u2019s leaders, Trump declared that if Iran \u201cviolently kills peaceful protesters\u2026 America will come to their rescue.\u201d In Unherd, a British online news and opinion site, David Patrikarakos quoted a friend living in Iran proclaiming, \u201cGod bless Donald Trump!\u201d<\/p>\n
Patrikarakos wondered whether these protests would finally succeed. The friend replied: \u201cWe don\u2019t know. But now we have the US president behind us! This has never happened before. The regime can murder us, but it cannot take on America.\u201d If Trump supports the protesters, anti-Trump fanatics and pro-Mullah manipulators will claim he\u2019s recommitting America\u2019s 1953 crime of dumping the \u201cdemocratically elected\u201d former Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh in a coup. Don\u2019t buy this balderdash.<\/p>\n
This story has been oversimplified to bash America for decades.<\/p>\n
As usual, history is more complicated. Iran\u2019s Parliament, the Majlis \u2013 not the people \u2013 chose Mossadegh, with the Shah formally appointing him, in 1951. Within months, this supposed democratic saint manipulated parliamentary elections and tanked the economy, infuriating religious leaders, merchants, and the middle class. In 1952 Mossadegh seized emergency \u201cdictatorial decree\u201d powers. We can debate whether those abuses still justified a now-exaggerated CIA participation in the broader coup unseating him. But let\u2019s reframe this one-sided anti-American story.<\/p>\n
In 2009, psyched out by years of Iranian theocrats and American progressives weaponizing that myth, then-president Barack Obama failed to encourage the Iranian people\u2019s Green Movement. Thirteen years later, in what even CNN called \u201ca rare moment of public self-criticism by a former president\u201d \u2013 Obama admitted: \u201cIn retrospect, I think that was a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cEvery time we see a flash, a glimmer of hope, of people longing for freedom, I think we have to point it out. We have to shine a spotlight on it. We have to express some solidarity about it.\u201d On the streets, in markets, and on campus, Iranian heroes are overcoming their reasonable fears of torture and murder, flashing, glimmering, and demanding their freedom.<\/p>\n
We must all do what we can to \u201cshine a spotlight\u201d on their actions, expressing lots \u2013 not \u201csome\u201d – solidarity, boosting government leaders ready to sanction Iranian exiles worldwide and the long-suffering people of Iran, ready to rumble. Do you want to tell your kids that Iranians fought for freedom while you slept \u2013 or cowered?<\/p>\n
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