Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2025 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Donald Trump
Top 5 Signs Trump doesn't Actually Care about Iranian Protesters

Top 5 Signs Trump doesn’t Actually Care about Iranian Protesters

Juan Cole 12/31/2017

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Trump has tweeted as though he cares about the welfare of the Iranian protesters in small towns across that country who are upset about reduced government subsidies for commodities such as eggs and gasoline. His administration tried to prosecute protesters for laughing at VP Mike Pence.

The scattered rallies, mostly consisting of a few hundred people but sometimes swelling to 1,000, continued for a third day.

Here are the reasons for which these statements are hypocritical.

1. If Trump cared about Iranian dissidents, he would welcome those who want to flee to the United States. The more forthright and well known dissidents are at risk of long jail sentences or even death. Instead, Trump has tried to ban Iranians from coming to the United States at all. If he won’t let a grandmother come for her grandchild’s wedding, how much does he care about Iranians?

2. The protesters are protesting economic hardship. But Trump and the Washington Establishment were all for imposing economic hardship on the Iranian public to pressure the government to give up its nuclear fuel enrichment program. Under severe sanctions which Trump doesn’t think severe enough, some families stopped being able to afford imported medicines key to treating a family member. Some of today’s economic problems are rooted in the American deep sanctions and in the GOP Congress’s refusal to lift sanctions on Iranians after the government signed the nuclear deal.

3. Sympathizing with working people facing increased prices is not Trump’s brand, and it is rich for him to pretend to care about them. Trump with his budget law has just plunged millions of Americans living in straitened circumstances into even more dire poverty and is trying to take health care insurance away from 26 million Americans. Trump hasn’t even gotten the electricity back on for American citizens in Puerto Rico because of his racism. So if Trump were in power in Iran, the people in the streets protesting would be treated much worse than they are now.

4. The protesters are complaining about the arbitrary, high-handed and authoritarian way that the clerical regime has run Iran. Trump does not object to any of those policies in principle. He just told the New York Times that as president, he can do anything he wants and it is legal, and that he can suborn the Department of Justice. Trump also wants to outlaw abortion in order to please his base of religious evangelicals and conservative Catholics. That the Iranian clerics make policy on irrational religious grounds is one of the things people mind about them, but how is Ayatollah Trump different?

5. Trump has allied himself, and aligned himself, with the Saudi royal family, which in turn is attempting to undermine Iran. Trump is backing Saudi Arabia’s cruel and useless bombing campaign on poor little Yemen. That any Iranians would see Trump as sympathetic to them beggars belief.

——

Related video added by Juan Cole:

CNN: “Trump: World is watching Iran protests”

Filed Under: Donald Trump, Featured, Iran, workers

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

Support Independent Journalism

Click here to donate via PayPal.

Personal checks should be made out to Juan Cole and sent to me at:

Juan Cole
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
USA
(Remember, make the checks out to “Juan Cole” or they can’t be cashed)

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter to have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.
Warning! Social media will not reliably deliver Informed Comment to you. They are shadowbanning news sites, especially if "controversial."
To see new IC posts, please sign up for our email Newsletter.

Social Media

Bluesky | Instagram

Popular

  • Pope Leo XIV’s Link to Haiti is Part of a broader American Story of Race, Citizenship and Migration
  • Libyan Gov't Decries Fake News about Taking 1 mn. Palestinian Refugees: "Committed to the Palestinian Cause"
  • As Trump urges End to Gaza Fighting, Half a Million Face Starvation and Israel bombs more Hospitals
  • For all Trump's new Mideast Contracts, Two Big Deals Elude Him
  • That Sucking Sound you hear is Trump Flushing America down the Toilet

Gaza Yet Stands


Juan Cole's New Ebook at Amazon. Click Here to Buy
__________________________

Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires



Click here to Buy Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Click here to Buy The Rubaiyat.
Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2025 All Rights Reserved