Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Gholamhossein Gheybparvar offered comments to Iran’s ISNA news agency downplaying President Trump’s overnight tweet threatening Iran will “suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before.”
Gheybparvar said Iran’s people and military would “stand firm in the face of enemies,” and that Trump’s comments amounted to little more than psychological warfare. He added that “Trump cannot do a damn thing against Iran.”
Iranian officials have long taken similar positions about Trump Administration statements, dismissing them as empty threats. The Trump Administration is in an ongoing effort to undermine Iran’s government through statements, and that clearly informs the reaction to such statements as Trump made last night.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry also issued a statement rejecting Sunday comments by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, calling them “clear interference” in Iran’s internal matters. Pompeo called the Iranian government a mafia, and urged Iranians living abroad to support anti-government protests in the country.
Doesn’t Iran know that they should ignore petulant children? Silence would have been golden in this case.
If Trump-Bolton want regime change in Iran they had better be fast because huge problems for them are now brewing between El Paso and Cabo de Hornos which are likely to increase the flow of refugees to our Southern border. The Trump-Sessions policy for the refugees which is the only one which Trump et al have come up with to deal with these problem states and governments is not going to have much effect on the stream of these desperate people. History has shown over and over again, as it does today in the region of the Mediterranean, that violence and threats of violence will move people.
A totally new set of policies must be developed swiftly to deal with and help without military intervention at least for Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Venezuela. The old policies are failing miserably.
President Trump needs to set up a non-partisan advisory board for the Western Hemisphere with members and advisers from past administrations to develop new ideas of how to deal with those huge problems. I may anger many by suggesting that former President Obama ought to be a member of that board. So be it.
Would the board member of the School of the Americas, who is now chief of staff, be on that commission ?