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Iran is Imitating Chinese Oppression. Biden Should Not Ignore the Human Rights Abuses

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Two years ago this month, the Iranian people began their “Bloody November” mass protests, the largest since the Islamic Revolution took over the country four decades prior. Thousands were killed across Iran, including dozens of children, by their own government.

Now the evil mullahs are targeting and murdering people in Isfahan, a few hundred miles south of Tehran. Their crime? They seek clean drinking water.

Yes, egregious mismanagement by the theocrats has left 97% of Iranians without sufficient water. The shortage is worse in the agricultural zone of central Iran where Isfahan is located.

Related: Violence in Iran Over Water Shortages

A large protest began over the weekend, spreading to the rest of the country, which triggered the oppressive Islamist regime to crush it. And they did it in a way that would make Chinese totalitarians impressed: Tehran cut off their state-run Internet to disable the protestors, halt communication, and hide the government’s atrocities.

The embattled Biden administration, which claims to put human rights — and the environment — at the core of its foreign policy, has remained ignominiously silent as this atrocity unfolds.

Perhaps they assume Americans are busy with football or soaring inflation to worry about protests abroad. But channeling your inner Bernie Sanders or Tucker Carlson and ignoring the world is morally wrong.

Anyone over age 50 recalls when Iran was a western ally before the catastrophic 1979 Islamic Revolution and subsequent hostage crisis.

As the tragedy in Isfahan continues, those who care about the people of Iran being punished with death simply for seeking water should demand more from the White House.

Most Iranians do not support their noxious regime. This is the third time they’ve bravely risen up to demand basic rights. The 2009 Green Revolution was about a fraudulent election, the 2019-20 protests were sparked by a precipitous increase in fuel prices, and the ongoing iteration is over water. The brave protesters deserve our support.

Former President Barack Obama’s pitiable silence did not work a dozen years ago. Back then, John Kerry — quickly emerging as one of history’s most execrable politicians — followed his appeasement of Vietnam by appeasing Iran. He claimed that U.S. support for the Green Revolution would offend the protestors and empower the “hardliners.” Now he’s dead set on permitting further genocide in China if they assist his obsession with weather patterns.

That the gutless Obama administration decided not to back the Green Revolution seems a tacit admission that faux diplomacy is no substitute for condemning human rights abuses. The result was a lot of death, an entrenched regime, and the disastrous 2015 Iranian nuclear deal. Does Team Biden want a repeat of such failure?

Lastly, we need to enable the capacity to provide satellite-based free Internet access to the Iranian people so they can communicate when the regime kills the Internet. The same can be done in China, Cuba, and all the left-wing dictatorships the western progressives and isolationists appease. Let Google and our woke corporations do something to help America for once.

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