Iran Focus
London, 20 Mar – In his address to the Iranian people during the Persian New Year (Nowruz), Donald Trump attacked the Iranian Regime, their suppressive security forces, and their shadowy state institutions for stealing from the Iranian people in order to line their own pockets and fund illegal wars.
In the Monday speech, Trump rightly said that the Iranian people were struggling against “rulers who serve themselves instead of serving the people”, something that the Iranian people have been saying for decades.
Iran’s malign military adventures
Trump also laid into the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), whom he called “a hostile army that brutalizes and steals from the Iranian people to fund terrorism abroad”.
He advised in his statement that the IRGC has spent over $16 billion of the Iranian people’s money to prop up the Bashar Assad dictatorship in Syria and support terrorist groups (i.e. Hezbollah and the Houthis) across the Middle East, in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Trump further relayed that the Iranian Regime and their brutal IRGC forces were not just impoverishing the people of Iran, but also destroying the environment.
They have done this through failing to make or enforce laws to tackle air pollution and not tackling systematic water waste that has exacerbated the drought in Iran, but this lack of action is not only damaging the environment, it is also killing the Iranian people.
Non-existent human rights in Iran
Trump also noted that the Regime was suppressing the human rights of the Iranian people by suppressing their civil, political, and human rights.
This has been most obvious recently during the ongoing anti-regime protests, which were met with violence and arbitrary arrests on the part of the Regime.
Now, at least 50 protesters have been gunned down in the street by the IRGC or their Basij militia, while over 8,000 are still detained in jail possibly facing the death penalty. Then, there are those who have died in suspicious circumstances in jail. These deaths – dressed up as suicides by the prison authorities – are likely the result of torture and/or denial of appropriate medical treatment.
Trump said: “Twenty-five centuries ago, Darius the Great asked God to protect Iran from three dangers: hostile armies, drought, and falsehood. Today, the Iranian Regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps represents all three.”
Indeed, they do. The only way to see freedom and democracy in Iran is to support the Iranian people’s legitimate calls for regime change and work to hold the Regime accountable for their crimes.
