Years after he left office, a reflective Barack Obama admitted that he and his administration made a “mistake” in not forcefully supporting an Iranian civilian uprising in 2009 that could have ousted that country’s ruing mullahs. Faced with a fresh protest movement 16-plus years later led by street vendors, President Donald Trump has taken the opposite tact in a robust embrace of everyday Iranians that caught the attention of Tehran.

If Iran "violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” Trump wrote in a 3 a.m. post Friday on his TruthSocial platform. "We are locked and loaded and ready to go." 

The president was not more specific about his intentions, but Iranian dissidents and non-official Trump advisers cheered the statement and said it set the stage for tougher sanctions or other actions by the administration.

This president will support pro-democracy movements in the Middle East

“It's crucial that the leader of the free world quickly speak out and say which side he is on,” former CIA analyst and National Security Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz told Just the News. “And let's contrast that with 2009 when there were massive protests against (former Iran president) Ahmadinejad’s re-election, and Barack Obama was afraid to say anything because he wanted to negotiate the nuclear deal that became the fraudulent nuclear deal [...] that President Trump withdrew from.

“Obama was afraid of offending the Iranian leadership, and instead he let the French speak out. It was such an embarrassment for our country,” he added during an interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast. Comparing him to Obama, he said: "Donald Trump was not going to do that. He spoke out quickly and plainly and made it clear to the Iranian regime which side we're on.”

Before Friday, Trump had already sent a powerful message to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, back in July when B2 bombers attacked nuclear-weapons-making facilities that Tehran spent years building. Trump in 2020 also killed Qassem Soleimani, the general in charge of Iran’s notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC.)

Fleitz said the Trump administration could augment those actions and Friday’s embrace of Iran’s protesters with additional actions in the coming days.

“There's other very tough sanctions could be implemented. There could be interceptions of weapons and other supplies being used by the military and the IRGC at sea. There could be sanctions on Iranian ships and aircraft and leaders,” he explained.

Trump’s latest statement got immediate attention from Iran, which warned they believed the American president was meddling in the internal political affairs of a foreign country.

"Trump should know that intervention by the U.S. in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of U.S. interests," Ali Larijani, a former parliament speaker and current secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, wrote on X, as reported by CBS. "The people of the U.S. should know that Trump began the adventurism. They should take care of their own soldiers."

The current protests began six days ago, prompted by frustrations by street merchants in the Iranian bazaar markets frustrated by the nation’s declining dollar and massive inflation, and they have since spread countrywide. They pose the most serious threat to Iran’s ruling regime in years, perhaps since the 2009 Green Revolution protests that were brutally suppressed by the IRGC.

During that time, the Obama administration faced stiff criticism for not more forcefully supporting the protesters or warning Iran’s leaders there would be consequences for the brutal crackdown that ensued.

Obama admitted mistake on podcast in 2022

In 2022, Obama made a rare acknowledgment of regret and failure for the way he handled the Green Movement protests.

“When I think back to 2009, 2010, you guys will recall there was a big debate inside the White House about whether I should publicly affirm what was going on with the Green Movement, because a lot of the activists were being accused of being tools of the West and there was some thought that we were somehow gonna be undermining their street cred in Iran if I supported what they were doing,” the former president said on the “Pod Save America” podcast, run by a group of his former aides. “And in retrospect, I think that was a mistake.”

“Every time we see a flash, a glimmer of hope, of people longing for freedom, I think we have to point it out. We have to shine a spotlight on it. We have to express some solidarity about it,” he added.

Ali Safavi, a top leader of Iranian opposition group the National Council of Resistance of Iran, told Just the News that Trump’s comments Friday were a welcome departure from the tepid response Obama gave in 2009 and the continued inaction of the Biden administration as Iran began executing thousands of political prisoners and protesters the last five years.

“I think it was important,” Safavi said during an interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast. “In short, we welcome the firmest stance of the U.S. government against the Iranian regime's brutal crackdown on innocent and unarmed people, as well as the efforts to hold the regime leaders accountable for their crimes.

“As you know, for 46 years, the Iranian regime and its leaders, including Khamenei, have been engaged in acts of genocide and crimes against humanity, and unfortunately, the inaction of the international community in all these years only emboldened them in these atrocities,” he added.

Safavi said he did not believe the United States would need to commit any troops or military power for regime change to occur in Iran.

“The overthrow of the ruling dictatorship is only possible at the hands of the people of Iran and the organized resistance, a responsibility that the resistance units and rebellious use are striving to fulfill,” he said. "And toppling this regime, of course, requires neither foreign troops, nor foreign funding."

"Instead, the international community, the European Union and the US should recognize the right of the Iranian people to topple this regime and so, in this context, and a decisive statement of support for what is happening in the future of Iran today, is certainly encouraging to the Iranian people," he added.

Safavi suggested there are several steps the West could take in coming days that would aid the resistance on the ground inside Iran, including:

• European nations designating the IRGC as a foreign terrorist group like Trump did in 2019;
• Expelling all Iranian diplomats from Western countries;
• Convening a meeting of the UN National Security Council to express support for the Iranian people and condemning Tehran’s crackdowns;
• Imposing a ban on all Iranian banking globally, including ending the country’s ability to conduct transactions in the SWIFT banking system; and
• Enforcing a worldwide ban on Iranian oil sales.

Getting the message of support to the people of Iran

Fleitz urged Trump to quickly revamp the messaging on its foreign-facing radio and TV networks like Voice of America and Radio Liberty so that the Iranian people know of Trump’s support, something that they often can’t see because much of social media and Western news is blocked in the country.

“The Iranian regime does not want the people to know that protesters are being killed. We have to get the message into the country that this is happening, because if the people know that the regime is responding to their peace of protesters by killing protesters, which the regime doesn't want to know about, these demonstrations could snowball,” he explained.

Fleitz said the current protests may not be strong enough yet to topple the regime, but could rise to that level soon.

“I think it's a significant threat,” he said. “It has not yet reached critical mass to become a revolution, or something we can say will overturn the regime. But it is getting stronger,” he said.