Vittert: Biden has a choice, side with democracy or Iran
In this photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks on the anniversary of the death of the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, shown in the poster at top center, at his mausoleum in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 4, 2022. Khamenei acknowledged Saturday that Iran took the oil from two Greek tankers last month in helicopter-launched raids in the Persian Gulf. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
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(NewsNation) — Iranians chanting “death to Khamenei” face death themselves, yet once again students, and this time around women, say they won’t leave the streets. With water cannons, tear gas and live ammunition, the regime is fighting back. Those on the street only have their voices.
President Biden now faces a choice: he’s with the students demanding democracy or he’s with the Mullahs.
He knows how the script goes.
In 2009, students took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands, demanding freedom, democracy and the end of religious persecution. Thousands were arrested. Some disappeared. The regime killed many more.
The Obama administration turned its back on the protesters. Mr. Obama and his team made a decision; They wanted a nuclear deal with the Ayatollah, and letting the protesters die was one of the many costs.
You might remember longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak of Egypt didn’t have anything the Obama administration wanted. When mass protests swept Egypt, Mr. Obama abandoned him.
The Muslim Brotherhood took over. A U.S.-trained Egyptian general then threw out the brotherhood in a coup. Egypt is no better off.
In Iran, the protests began with Masha Amini, a woman arrested by the religious police for not covering her head. They killed her.
Then, the protests began and the Iranians went back to their 2009 playbook of beating and shooting and crushing the protesters, while their president played victim on “60 Minutes.”
“The sanctions are very tyrannical. This is a tyranny against the people of Iran and it is important to us to have the sanctions lifted,” he said on “60 Minutes.”
From all indications, President Biden will sell out the protesters.
His deal with Iran will include $130 billion in sanctions relief and taking the Iran Revolutionary Guard off the terrorist list.
To say it’s giving the regime a big win is an understatement. Actually it is a $130 billion win; that is the amount of foreign assets the regime gets access to.
President Biden ran on standing up to dictators. There are people crying out in the streets for American help, and we are considering giving the regime killing them $130 billion.
Since 2009, Iranian-backed groups have killed dozens if not hundreds of Americans. The Iran Revolutionary Guard helped kill hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq, and thousands of Americans don’t have limbs because of Iranian-designed IEDs. Let’s also not mention Iran’s support of terrorists groups attacking Israel.
Their list of bad acts goes on. Clearly keeping them in power and abandoning the protesters in 2009 didn’t work out so well.
Opportunities to take out the Ayatollah don’t come along very often.
President Biden heads to the U.N. General Assembly tomorrow. The Iranians will be there. Mr. Biden has a choice: He’s with the mullahs or those risking their life in the streets demanding democracy.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and not of NewsNation.
