Joe Biden confesses to being “stunned” — stunned, I say — about the protests in Iran.
The fact that they had been going on for five weeks apparently didn’t register in the old man’s head. In truth, Biden has barely acknowledged the titanic struggle between good and evil taking place on the streets of Tehran where hijab-less women are being gunned down by men who have no fashion sense whatsoever.
Biden’s response to the violent crackdown on women and children has been tepid. He gave pro-forma support to the protests during his UN speech last month and slapped some mild sanctions on the morality police who murdered the 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, which set the protests in motion.
He finally roused himself in the most extended remarks on the protests on Friday at a community college in California.
“I want you to know that we stand with the citizens, the brave women of Iran, for real, for real,” Biden said, “who right now are demonstrating to secure their very basic, fundamental rights.”
Yes, Joe. The protests are for real, for real. And that’s for real, for real blood being spilled, and those are for real, for real little girls being beaten in their own classrooms.
Biden said the nation has been “awakened” by the women-led protests and won’t be quieted for “a long, long time.”
Biden on Friday said, “Women all over the world are being persecuted in various ways, but they should be able to wear in God’s name what they wanna wear. No one should be telling them what to wear.”
The President also thanked those at the event who were holding signs that read “Free Iran,” acknowledging some of the protesters outside the college where he was speaking.
“I want to thank you all for speaking out. I want to thank the Persian community here for being so vocal,” Biden said.
Biden appears to remember the criticism of the Obama administration’s totally inadequate response in 2009 following the rigged presidential election. With millions of Iranians in the streets begging for moral support from the Obama administration, very little was forthcoming, and through brute force, the authorities were able to restore order.
Today, Biden is at least speaking out.
The protests have entered a new phase, but the police and Revolutionary Guards have staked out most of the squares and parks where protesters had been demonstrating. And with the internet virtually shut down, activists have been forced to use VPNs to organize flash mobs that show up and disperse quickly.
Now the activists want something far stronger: a nationwide show of strength, organizing under the slogan, “The beginning of the end.”
They have called on people across Iran to show up at spots where the security forces are not present and to chant “Death to the dictator.”
“We have to be present in the squares, because the best VPN these days is the street,” they declared, referring to virtual private networks used to skirt internet restrictions.
In response, one of the Iranian regime’s main revolutionary bodies, the Islamic Development Coordination Council, has called on people to join a counter-demonstration after evening prayers on Saturday to “express their revolutionary anger against sedition and rioters.”
There have been reports of a massacre in Zahedan on September 30 with police and IRGC firing from the roofs of buildings. At least 66 died in that massacre alone.
Police breaking into schoolrooms and beating students, the sexual assault of young women and girls, and the beating of children continue. The regime is taking no half-measures. They will kill as many people of any age to stay in power.
And they will do it in the name of Allah.
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