I Want Iran to Be Free More Than Anything. I Also Don’t Trust Trump.
In 2018, Trump withdrew from the Iranian nuclear deal. Also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that agreement was negotiated by Iran, the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and Germany, a remarkable feat of diplomacy. Some Iranians—or Americans—may have amnesia about it now, but at the time, it was widely celebrated. In Iran, thousands took to the streets to celebrate the deal, which promised relief from the sanctions crippling their country and their lives. In America, one poll found that nearly 60 percent of American voters supported the agreement. When Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, he called it a “horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made”—and reimposed sanctions to “target critical sectors of Iran’s economy,” never shrinking from the fact that this would hurt the very Iranians he now purports to support.
In his second term, it has been nearly impossible to track the number of Iranians who have been deported from the United States. Queer Iranians, fearing death upon their return to Iran, have been targeted. Christian Iranians, fearing the same, have been sent back to Iran or to a detention center in Panama, with no freedom in sight. The Trump administration is reviewing the green cards of nationals of 19 countries, which—surprise, surprise!—also includes Iran. Just this week, we got news of a woman who was adopted from Iran at the age of two by a U.S. veteran, who is now at risk of deportation because she overstayed her visa, as a toddler. This administration has spent the past year endeavoring to get as many Iranians who got out of the country sent back to face the current bombing campaign.
A war is a welcome distraction for Trump, who is failing on all fronts domestically and collecting the sort of polling numbers you’d expect for these failures. This week, the Department of Justice was caught removing a picture from its Epstein files cache of Howard Lutnick, now Trump’s commerce secretary, seen cavorting with the sexual predator on his private island. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made headlines after he implored Americans to “eat liver” instead of steak, amid a growing affordability crisis (he issued this call while on a “real food” tour of high-end barbecue restaurants in Texas). And Trump’s aforementioned poll numbers continue to drop every week, with the latest being that nearly 60 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. This bombing campaign is the latest desperate act from a desperate man.
