Remember Iran

While President Biden pursues a deal with Iran’s mullahs, the mullahs are gunning down women in the streets, beating old men, and disappearing their citizenry. Protests started after Iran’s morality police killed 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for not wearing a hijab, the headscarf, properly. Amini had gone to Tehran from another province and encountered the police.

The women of Iran took to the streets. Riots have broken out. The regime is beating and killing its citizens.

The Iranian people have been held hostage by the regime for decades. I grew up in Dubai with many friends from Iran. They are wonderful people, very Western, and desperate for freedom. Their relatives in Iran are unarmed and held at the whims of terror masters and religious fundamentalists like the Taliban hold the Afghan people.

Iran’s regime funds terrorism around the world. The regime wants to exterminate Israel and undermine other Middle Eastern nations. Increasingly, Iran, Russia, and China are forming a new Axis of Evil.

President Biden has loosened restraints on American technology companies to enable Iranian access to the internet. Elon Musk has enabled Starlink for Iranians, though it is unclear how receivers and transmitters can enter the country. Still, the President could speak up more forcefully and walk away from a deal with the mullahs.

Democrats in Washington have, for too long, been trying to think differently about Iran in ways that embolden not the people but the terror masters. Dogmatically, they have attacked and condemned any effort to restrain the mullahs. When the people of Iran rose up and took to the streets in 2009, waving American flags instead of burning them, President Obama stayed silent. His silence emboldened the mullahs.

President Biden could chart a different course and speak up for the people, stop the negotiations with the mullahs, and help spark a movement of free people in Iran. They want our voice and support. They do not need our arms or soldiers. They need to know we are with them.

Ending the Iranian regime should be a priority to for any American President. The end of that terror theocracy would be stabilizing for the Middle East while also helping contain Russia and China’s ambitions.

Mr. President, speak up for the people getting gunned down in the streets of Tehran. Speak up for the voiceless and for the memory of Mahsa Amini.