President Trump Can Regain Iranian Freedom and Security that Obama Lost

In 2009, Iranian citizens took to the streets in protest over alleged election fraud by the Islamic regime. The declared winner was the regime's own incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His main defeated rival was Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a self-proclaimed reformist, who had previously served as the final prime minister in the Khomeinist regime before that office was abolished in 1989. The large middle range of Iranian citizens, who mostly live in the metropolises, were surprised by the results and became convinced that election fraud was committed to ensure the regime's hold on power. Ahmadinejad's two electoral rivals, along with other minor candidates who had no chance to win, belonged to Khomeinist political wings. But the people wanting change from harsh rule by the regime found that the electoral battle opened an opportunity to turn events in their favor.

Millions of Iranians took to the streets, especially in the capital, where they chanted, "Where is my vote?" That simple protest over the matter of voter fraud soon became replaced with radical slogans including "Down with the dictator"; "Down with the supreme leader"; "Putin, Nasrallah, Hugo Chávez are our enemies"; and "Khamenei, shame on you, leave the country alone!" The anti-regime protest, called the Green Movement, could have led to regime collapse if the so-called reformists had not betrayed the Iranian people. The thing that made the reformists' betrayal even worse was that the American president, Barack Obama, also turned his back on those freedom-seeking Iranians. Having been recently elected as a Democrat claiming to bring "Hope" and "Change" to America, Barack Hussein Obama remained silent when millions of Iranians took to the streets in June of 2009. They had hopes of bringing change to their tragic lives under harsh Islamic rule. But Obama was silent when Iranians demanded freedom from the terrorist regime that has threatened the world, especially America, with death and destruction ever since it seized power in 1979. Obama was silent when Iranians cried out, "Are you with us, or are you with them?" Instead of offering the people any moral support, Obama stayed passive. His voice could have boosted Iranian peoples' hopes to bring positive change in Iran. His silence revealed that his favor was with the mullahs. It was not surprising. After all the treachery that Obama brought to the Iranian people over the next eight years, the political ground for Iran changed after 2016, when the new American president took office in the White House. President Trump provides a new narrative for the people of Iran. Mr. Trump has challenged European leaders over the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, which he promised to exit from during his presidential campaign. He fulfilled that promise as president, when he finally withdrew the U.S. from the bad deal. President Trump, who is called the "President of Hearts" by many Iranian netizens, is right to have done so. We Iranians recognized it as a bad deal as early as 2015: "This deal will provide up to $150 billion windfall of cash into the bank account of our tyrants and theocrats. This money will not be spent on the Iranian people but rather to enrich a repressive regime." As an Iranian exile tweeted, "[o]n the sidelines of the Warsaw Summit, the prospect of a century deal between the Arab states and Israel should not be ignored. The President of Hearts kills two birds with one stone." The President of Hearts has also come out in support of the coming peaceful transition in Iran and warned that the world is watching closely for human rights violations. The Trump administration has backed hopes for a secular alternative to clerical rule after the people took to the streets across the country beginning in late December 2017. Iranians will never forget that merciful support, as they will never forget the treason against Iranian humanity by Democratic presidents Barack Hussein Obama and Jimmy Carter. The U.S. should fulfill its promise of freedom to humanity, including to Iranians. America can bring light to the darkness of Iranian human rights violations, even if Europe chooses to continue its appeasement of the Islamic regime's criminal acts, as it has done in the past four decades, ever since the 1979 Guadeloupe Conference (U.S., U.K., France, and West Germany) tragically abetted the incoming kleptocratic Khomeinist regime by those Western powers' conclusion to do nothing to help save the Pahlavi dynasty from collapse. It is time for the President of Hearts to play his worthwhile historical role, regardless of the fact that Europeans will still flirt with the repressive-terrorist regime. That role for Trump should be to tighten the sanctions, to increase the pressure upon the mullahs, both economically and politically. Then the people can easily overthrow the regime, which would ensure security for the Middle East and the world. Aynaz Anni Cyrus is an Iranian-American human rights activist and founder of Live Up To Freedom. She is the producer of The Glazov Gang and hosts its feature The Unknown. Kaveh Taheri (Twitter: @TaheriKaveh), co-founder and chairman of ICBHR.com, is a Turkey-based Iranian human rights researcher and journalist who has worked exclusively on the Middle East. Kaveh, a former political prisoner in Shiraz, was sent to prison for his writings and statements on his websites and weblogs in Iran and fled the country through Turkey to save his life.