New Delhi: During the current US-Iran war, US President Donald Trump has made ample use of social media to air out his thoughts to the world. Some of his messages have been blunt, some brutal threats, others have been seen to be comical by many of his adversaries. Whatever may have been the varying content of his social media posts, there is no arguing that they have been effective in propagating his message.
In one of his latest outpourings to the public, the US President has made some startling comments among other things on the most recent spate of protests that shook Iran, some months before the start of the current war.
Trump on Iran and Kurds
US President Donald Trump on Sunday claimed that the US provided guns to the anti-regime protestors in Iran, adding that the “Kurds took the guns”. “We sent them a lot of guns. We sent them through the Kurds. And I think the Kurds kept them,” Trump told Fox News over a telephonic interview.
The Kurds are an ethnic group native to the Middle East, sharing a historical identity, language family and cultural traditions. They inhabit a mountainous region spanning southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, northern Iraq, and western Iran. Despite forming one of the largest stateless nations in the world, the current persecution of Kurds follows a historical pattern of targeting their political autonomy, dismantling self-governance institutions and using aggressive military programmes against the scattered minority.
During the ongoing war against Iran, Trump had been open to the possibility of a Kurdish offensive against Iran. On the prospects of a Kurdish rebellion in Iran, Trump recently told Reuters that, “I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it.”
On recent protests in Iran
Trump also claimed that the Iranian regime “slaughtered” 45,000 people during the recent anti-regime protests in the country. Meanwhile there have been no official figures from Iran as to the number of casualties that occurred during the demonstrations.
The protests were triggered by anger over economic hardship, but when security forces fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators at the Tehran bazaar, the protests escalated and slowly transformed into larger anti-establishment protests which reached a high point not seen in recent Iranian history.