As talk of nuclear threats gives way to promises of ‘help’, the Bush-era logic of regime change re-emerges.
On Saturday, just under two weeks into the protests that are now sweeping Iran, United States President Donald Trump took to his social media platform of choice to post a message of support: “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
As usual, Trump’s random capitalisation scheme and excessive use of exclamation points would better befit an elementary schoolchild than the leader of the global superpower. But the promise of American help is also problematic in far more significant ways.
For starters, “help” is not exactly a specialty of the US – and particularly not under the guidance of the man who bombed Iran just last summer, right after returning to power on a pledge to keep the US out of foreign wars.
Trump is furthermore responsible for maintaining a crippling sanctions regime against the Islamic Republic, thereby fuelling the high inflation that triggered the present protests in the first place. As is par for the course in such forms of economic warfare, the nonelite of Iran have paid the highest price.
In addition to constituting a departure from his whole “America First” premise, Trump’s recent offer of “help” to the Iranians marks a shift in presidential rhetoric vis-a-vis the much-maligned country. Previously, the Trumpian discourse mainly targeted Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles equipped with chemical and biological warheads – all of which were marketed as a dangerous threat not only to the US but also to America’s BFF and current regional partner in genocide, the state of Israel.
Now, however, Trump is in “rescue” mode, warning this month that “if Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.”
On Tuesday, Trump assured Iranian protesters that “help is on the way” without elaborating as to what this might consist of. Right-wing US media have pitched in with such encouraging headlines as “Trump has historic chance to help topple Iran’s America-hating regime.”
For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has chimed in with the affirmation that Israel supports the Iranian protesters’ “struggle for freedom and firmly condemns the mass killings of innocent civilians” – quite the statement from someone who has been presiding over the genocide of Palestinians for more than two years.
With his recent promises of assistance, one can’t help but wonder if Trump isn’t taking a page from the old playbook of former US President George W Bush, the ex-“war on terror” chief and the face of an administration that was dedicated to propagating the very neo-conservative ideology to which Trump has long ostensibly been so vehemently opposed.
In essence, the neo-con objective is to wreak military havoc throughout the world using democracy promotion and other superficially nice ideas as an excuse for deadly imperial expansion. And while Trump successfully wooed many US voters with his alleged commitment to abandoning such pursuits in far-off lands in favour of total self-absorption and “making America great again”, it seems the neo-conservative impulse is hard to kick.
To be sure, Trump’s presidency recalls Bush’s in more ways than one. Both men possess clownish demeanours – not to mention an intriguing relationship with English grammar and spelling – that would be entirely amusing if not for the extensive bloodshed over which they have respectively presided.
Likewise, both men have proven disproportionately eager to invoke God as an ally in their destructive endeavours.
Despite Trump’s professed opposition to the policy of regime change and the Bush-era interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan – part of a “war on terror” that ultimately left millions of people dead – he has in his first year back in office managed to bomb an assortment of nations as well as kidnap the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro.
Florida Congressman Randy Fine, who has just introduced a bill that would permit Trump to annex Greenland, has also taken to X to propose that “Maybe we should Maduro Khamenei.” In this case, “Khamenei” refers to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei while “Maduro” functions as a brand-new verb for abducting the leader of a sovereign state.
But as Trump now promises that the US is “ready to help!!!” Iran, it’s worth thinking back on other instances of American “help!!!” in the country – like that time in 1953 that the CIA engineered a coup d’etat against democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, which set the stage for the long reign of the torture-happy shah of Iran, who was finally overthrown by the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
The late shah’s son, it so happens, is now conveniently agitating for US intervention from his position of gilded exile outside Washington, DC.
Meanwhile, Trump may have caught on to the perks of “helping” people in other countries as a means of distracting from certain antidemocratic realities at home – among them that the US has been converted into a full-fledged police state where immigration agents feel free to murder US citizens at will.
And as Trump continues semi-channeling Bush, pretty much the last thing Iranians need is for the US to “come to their rescue”.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect media’s editorial stance.
