The United States will not tolerate Iran killing its protesters, according to administration officials. By making this view known, the Trump administration hopes to discourage the regime from launching a brutal crackdown.
“If we can save one Iranian life from being killed by shining a light on what their government has done in past protests, then we think it’s worth it,” a State Department public affairs official told reporters late Monday.
Trump and other U.S. officials repeatedly have warned Iranian officials against using violence to end the protests that erupted after the regime admitted to shooting down a Ukrainian passenger jet last week. The effort to protect Iranian dissidents comes within the context of Trump’s team trying to “rebuild deterrence,” as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier this week, by retaliating against Iranian-controlled attacks on U.S. military forces and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
[Video shows moment that Iran shot down passenger jet, killing all 176 on board]
“We want the regime to know that the United States is watching, that the world is watching, and that we are going to shine a very, very big light on any abuse by the regime to their own people,” Morgan Ortagus, the State Department’s top spokeswoman, said Monday. “We are not going to tolerate killing innocent protesters. Trump was very clear about that over the weekend.”
Such public diplomacy has stirred questions about whether the administration risks distracting Iranian popular attention away from the authorities in Tehran, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s team dismisses those reservations.
“I do not believe in the quote/unquote, ‘kiss of death,’” a senior State Department official told reporters. “I don’t think this risks a setback or diminishment of the numbers or the fervor that these people have demonstrated to date.”
The protests over the downed airline broke out just days after Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was buried. The chain of events is unfolding less than two months after Iranian authorities ended widespread working-class protests through a repressive crackdown that left as many as 1,500 people dead.
“The threat is really that the government in Tehran has been brutally repressing the protesters and, as has been the case in Iraq, and this has impact over time on the number of people who come out oftentimes,” the senior State Department official said.
