“Iran is taking a look at FREEDOM, maybe like by no means earlier than. The USA stands prepared to assist!!!” President Donald Trump wrote Saturday as he escalated his public backing of Iran’s protesters — and sharpened warnings to the regime in Tehran.
Trump posted repeatedly on Fact Social all through the day, together with a submit this night highlighting demonstrators in London who scaled Iran’s embassy, tore down the Islamic Republic’s flag, and hoisted the nation’s pre-1979 image as a substitute.
The scene unfolded at Iran’s embassy close to Hyde Park, the place a protester climbed onto a balcony and changed the regime’s flag with Iran’s pre-Islamic Revolution lion-and-sun emblem as a whole lot of demonstrators beneath cheered and chanted for “Democracy for Iran” and “Free Iran.”
The flag — used through the rule of the shah earlier than the 1979 Islamic revolution — remained aloft for a number of minutes earlier than being eliminated, as London police stated further officers had been deployed and a number of arrests had been made for aggravated trespass.
Hours earlier, Trump declared that Iran is “taking a look at FREEDOM, maybe like by no means earlier than,” including that the USA “stands prepared to assist.”
Earlier than that, Trump reposted a message from Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was responding to Secretary of State Marco Rubio after Rubio said, “The USA helps the courageous individuals of Iran.”
Within the submit Trump shared, Graham stated that is “actually not the Obama administration” relating to confronting “the Iranian ayatollah and his non secular Nazi henchmen,” whereas standing behind Iranians “protesting for a greater life.”
“To the regime management: your brutality towards the good individuals of Iran is not going to go unchallenged,” Graham wrote, including: “Make Iran Nice Once more.”
The president’s on-line drumbeat comes as nationwide protests that erupted December 28 have continued to increase, even because the regime imposed a sweeping web blackout that started Thursday night time and remained in impact by means of Saturday night time and into Sunday in Tehran — a transfer broadly seen as an try to suppress coordination and conceal the scope of the crackdown.
Trump’s warnings have been constructing for days. Talking on the White Home on January 9, he stated the USA would act if the regime started killing protesters — whereas stressing any response wouldn’t contain a floor invasion.
“I’ve made the assertion very strongly that if they begin killing individuals like they’ve previously, we are going to get entangled,” Trump stated. “That doesn’t imply boots on the bottom, but it surely means hitting them very, very arduous the place it hurts.”
In a January 2 Fact Social submit, Trump warned that if Iran “shoots and violently kills peaceable protesters, which is their customized,” the USA would “come to their rescue,” including that American forces had been “locked and loaded and able to go.”
He reiterated that posture on January 8, saying the U.S. was “prepared” to strike Iran arduous if protesters had been killed — although he famous that, “for probably the most half, they haven’t” been.
The escalation additionally comes as administration officers have held preliminary discussions about potential U.S. army choices ought to Tehran intensify its crackdown, together with the potential of a large-scale aerial strike focusing on Iranian army belongings, in line with a Wall Avenue Journal report printed Saturday.
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