Unlike Old Joe Biden and his corrupt claque, Trump doesn’t believe that giving aid and comfort to the nation’s enemies is a winning foreign policy, and it looks as if those days are over, at least for now.
After Old Joe and those who were running his presidential clown show spent four years funneling billions to the Islamic Republic of Iran and doing everything they could to appease and accommodate its bloodthirsty, repressive rulers, Donald Trump is changing course on this as well as virtually everything else. On Tuesday, he reinstated his “maximum pressure” campaign that brought the Iranian regime to the brink four-plus years ago before Biden and his henchmen arrived to save the day.
Fox News reported Tuesday that Trump “unveiled” the executive order reinstating the "maximum pressure" campaign but was a bit ambivalent about doing so. “So this is one I’m torn about,” the president (yes, leftists, the president) explained. “Everyone wants me to sign it. I’ll do that.” And he did. Nevertheless, he said that he was “unhappy to do it,” adding: “We have to be strong and firm… I hope that it’s not going to have to be used in any great measure at all.”
Fox notes that “the order instructs the Treasury Department to execute ‘maximum economic pressure’ upon Iran through a series of sanctions aimed at sinking Iran’s oil exports.” This policy was in place during Trump’s first administration, and as the Iranian regime continued to fund the jihad activities of Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel, the Iranian people grew to detest the regime, even staging demonstrations where they chanted that they didn’t care about Hezbollah or the Palestinians and that the Iranian government should care for its own.
Nationwide demonstrations began in Iran in Sept. 2022, following the suspicious death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in police custody after she had been arrested for not wearing hijab properly. The Islamic regime might have fallen, but Old Joe was ready with billions, and the mullahs survived the crisis.
Now, however, new sanctions could push the Iranian regime over the edge, and not a moment too soon. Not only is it still trying to develop a nuclear weapon that it would almost certainly use against Israel for the crime of being a Jewish state, but it appears to be still trying to assassinate Trump.
This has been going on for years. Back in Feb. 2023, Fox News reported that Iran had renewed its threats against Trump and the others: Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace force, declared: “God willing, we are looking to kill Trump [and] Pompeo… and military commanders who issued the order should be killed.”
Even before that, Iran’s state-controlled Ahlul Bayt News Agency reported on Jan. 23, 2021, that the Supreme Leader’s official website “posted a photo-montage of former U.S. President Donald Trump playing golf under the shadow of a drone, vowing to avenge the assassination of Iran’s Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, said in Dec. 2020: “Revenge is certain.” He added: “The assassin of Soleimani and the one who ordered the murder should be punished. As an esteemed person said, Soleimani’s shoe is worth more than the assassin’s head and even decapitation of the assassin will not compensate for Soleimani’s shoe; but they did the wrong thing. They should be punished. The one who ordered and the assassin should know that they should be punished at any time possible.” That threat appears to be still on the table.
Related: Iran Denies That It Is Trying to Murder Trump, But…
Trump was a favored Khamenei target even before Soleimani was killed. In Feb. 2019, the Supreme Leader declared to a military gathering that “as long as America continues its wickedness, the Iranian nation will not abandon ‘Death to America.’ ‘Death to America’ means death to Trump.”
Even before that, Iran was belligerent. On Sept. 23, 2015, two months after Obama’s Iran nuclear deal was finalized, Supreme Leader Khamenei published an article entitled “The Idols Will Be Shattered,” illustrated with a drawing of the Statue of Liberty shattered in pieces. In it, he declared, “The idol of the soul, the idol of pride, [and] the idol of sexual lust; the idol of tyranny and subservience; the idol of global tyranny [that is, the U.S.]; the idol of sloth and irresponsibility; and the other idols that shame the precious human soul—a plan that will spring forth from the depths of the heart will shatter them.” You’re right: it's hard to escape the impression that these guys don’t like us.
And now will be trying once again to remove them from power. All those who support free societies should hope Trump succeeds in doing this. The people of Iran, and the world at large, deserve better than the bloodthirsty mullahs.
