Expect tragedy if a Trump-inspired uprising fails in Iran

 During January’s mass demonstrations in Iran, President Trump addressed the Iranian people.  “Iranian Patriots, keep protesting — take over your institutions!!! Help is on its way.”  

At the outset of the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, he again urged Iranians to “Take over your government. It will be yours to take.”  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a similar call for Iranians “to take to the streets.” 

But without direct American support, including boots on the ground, any such uprising may be doomed. Former CIA director and retired four-star U.S. Army general David Petraeus points out that ordinary Iranians “do not have arms, organization, or real military capability.” Iranian military and paramilitary forces, who total nearly a million armed men, have a monopoly on violence.

Trump and Netanyahu may be setting the stage for a humanitarian and moral disaster. Witness what happened after the U.S. and its coalition partners drove Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War. President George H. W. Bush, unwilling to send ground troops into Iraq to depose Hussein, called on the “Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.”  Coalition airplanes dropped leaflets urging Iraqi soldiers........

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