Why
Donald Trump has chosen this moment to show fake compassion for the
Iranian people, picturing the Iranian government as an authoritarian
regime? We've seen the scenario endless times by the US White House
puppets in the past every time they wanted to get rid of any
government that didn't obey to US imperialism. But in this case, why
now?
Tehran-based
reporter, Reza Sayah and Trita Parsi, founder and president of the
National Iranian American Council spoke to DemocracyNow
and gave an explanation for the timing of Trump's statements, which
has to do with sabotaging the Iranian nuclear deal.
As
Reza Sayah states:
Once
Donald Trump came into office, the policy changed to confrontation.
The Iranians were hoping that the nuclear deal would lead to
international trade with the Europeans. A lot of Europeans are eager
to make some deals with the Iranian government. But I think a lot of
people are aware that the global economy still is controlled by the
US dollar, the US government. And Washington has shown that they
don’t support this nuclear deal. And that’s why a lot of
Europeans, a lot of European countries, have held back in making
deals with Iran.
Trita
Parsi goes further:
What
is coming up in January is a deadline in which the U.S. is obligated
to renew waivers on the sanctions, as long as Iran is living up to
its end of the bargain. All of the reports from the IAEA show that
the Iranians are complying with the agreement. And as a result, the
U.S. is obligated to renew these waivers; otherwise, the U.S. will be
out of compliance with the deal. This deadline is coming up sometime
around January 12th.
And
with these protests, I believe that Donald Trump has now found a new
pretext to do what he had planned to do all along: to not renew the
waivers and, as a result, essentially walk away from this deal. And
then the question is if this deal will be able to survive without the
United States. With the protests going on, he has a new pretext, and
it will probably be easier for him to make this decision and sell it
in Washington, compared to if he had done it three, four months ago.
As
Patrick Cockburn points
out:
So
far President Rouhani and his administration have reacted in a
low-key way to the protests, appealing for calm and saying people
have the right to demonstrate, but not to destroy property or engage
in violence. The government is clearly hoping that the demonstrations
will run out of steam, but so far the opposite seems to be happening.
The number of arrests is still low – 200 in Tehran by Sunday –
but Mr Rouhani must be under pressure to crack down and not to appear
weak.
This
he may do eventually, but well-publicised suppression of protests
might increase public support for them in Iran and would certainly
lead to the US and West Europeans jumping to the defence of human
rights in Iran with an enthusiasm they have failed to show in
countries such as Yemen where a Saudi-led blockade has brought eight
million people to the edge of famine.
Bloody
suppression of protests might also push the West Europeans towards Mr
Trump’s aggressive posture towards Iran and fatally undermine the
nuclear deal.
So
it's quite clear what Trump is trying to do. He tries to set the
preconditions for killing the Iranian nuclear deal for good, by
forcing the US Western allies to follow the plan. Human rights is the
pretext - for one more time - that will be used for this purpose.
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