"Trump is a showman": The anger in Iran after the promise that was not kept

In the weeks leading up to the war between the United States and Iran, President Donald Trump publicly encouraged the Iranian protesters who took to the streets against the regime. He called on them to "keep the names of the murderers and the abusers," and promised that the United States would stand by them. "Help is on the way," he declared at the time.

However, more than five months after the outbreak of the conflict, aid to the Iranian people and their liberation from the regime's rule remain among the most prominent goals that Trump has failed to achieve. According to Amnesty International, since that promise, the Iranian regime has executed at least 26 people in connection with the January protests, and many others may be in danger.

At the same time, American officials estimate that Iran's new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is even more interested than his father in advancing nuclear weapons. His father, Ali Khamenei, was killed in an airstrike on the first day of the war.

While Iran continues to deal with an internal crisis, Trump himself is already looking for a way out of the conflict. Negotiating teams are working to forge an agreement that would allow for the resumption of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively shut down, while the president tries to extract the United States from a war that has lasted longer and cost more than he initially anticipated.

In an interview he gave this summer, Trump admitted that he did not actually believe the uprising he encouraged could blossom into a significant rebellion, because he estimated that the Iranian security forces would suppress the protesters. "I never thought, unless they were fully armed, that they would have such an uprising, because these people are violent," he told conservative podcaster Hugh Hewitt.

For Iranians who heard Trump's initial promises, the feeling today is completely different. Many of them describe deep disappointment and even a sense of betrayal.

"I really thought help was on the way, but I was very wrong," said Vahid, a 35-year-old from Tehran who works at a startup company. He was one of several Iranians who spoke with the "New York Times" and asked to be identified by their first name only for fear of retaliation by the regime.

Maryam, a 36-year-old from Tehran who participated in the anti-government protests in January, claimed that Trump used the civil uprising to advance his own interests. "I feel that Trump and the United States are deceiving, and that Trump is a showman," she said. "They used the language of human rights only for their own benefit."

Sajjad, a 27-year-old from Tehran who works in the film industry, was even sharper. According to him, he has no trust in either Iran or the United States. "I don't think either of them cares about the interests of the Iranian people," he said. "In one word, I despise Trump, the United States, and everyone else."

Protests in Iran, fires on the road (Photo: Arab networks)

Promises replaced by talk of oil and Hormuz

The White House refused to answer questions regarding Trump's promise to help liberate the Iranian people. Instead, administration officials pointed to the main goal presented by the president - preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons - and argued that achieving this goal would also serve the Iranian population.

"For 47 years, American presidents and many world leaders have talked about the threat posed by Iran, but no one had the courage to deal with it," said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. "President Trump has taken decisive action to ensure that Iran will never again be able to harm our homeland, our soldiers, or our allies. A nuclear-free Iran means that the entire region and its inhabitants will be safer and more stable."

According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, more than 1,700 Iranian citizens have been killed during the war. The figure includes at least 175 people, most of them children, who were killed in an airstrike that hit a school on the first day of the fighting.

In closed-door conversations, officials in the American military admitted that it was American forces that carried out the attack on the school, and defined it as an intelligence failure. Trump, on the other hand, dismissed questions on the subject of responsibility and said in June: "Mistakes happen. War is an ugly thing."

His references to the suffering of Iranian citizens during the war were mostly brief, and even decreased as the months passed. When he announced in February that American and Israeli strikes had killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war, he defined it as "the greatest opportunity ever for the Iranian people to take back their country."

In April, Trump boasted that he had saved eight Iranian women from a death sentence, even though the Iranian government denied that they had been sentenced to execution. In May, he hinted that the United States might send weapons to the protesters, and in June he claimed that as part of a preliminary agreement, Iran would use assets that had been frozen in the past to purchase corn, soybeans, and other goods from American farmers - a move he presented both as a gain for the United States and as a way to deal with the hunger that had affected Iranians during the war.

However, the bulk of Trump's attention was subsequently turned to other issues, primarily the disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, which led to a spike in fuel prices and damage to global markets. When he presented a framework for an agreement with Iran in June, which has since collapsed, the president did not mention the Iranian people at all. Instead, he declared: "Ships of the world, start your engines. Let the oil flow."

One clause in the agreement stood out particularly to many Iranians as a direct contradiction to Trump's earlier promises: a commitment by both countries to respect the sovereignty of the other and "to refrain from interference in its internal affairs."

Trump even praised Iran's new leadership later on, even though the theocratic regime in the country remained in place. "The current Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people," he said. "They are pleasant to deal with. They are strong and smart people. They are not extremists, and they want to help their country."

One of the Iranian officials involved in contacts with the United States is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a veteran commander in the Revolutionary Guards who is known as someone who does not show much tolerance for domestic opposition. Since the outbreak of the war, the Revolutionary Guards have further increased their influence on government decision-making, and at the same time they continue to be the central body responsible for suppressing protests in the country.

---

"The biggest losers are the citizens of Iran"

Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Center for a New American Security and a former foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain, noted that this is not the first time an American president has called on the population in another country to rise up, but then left it to deal with the consequences alone.

The most prominent example, according to him, occurred in 1991, when President George H.W. Bush publicly encouraged Shiites in Iraq to rebel against the regime. US forces stood by as Saddam Hussein's regime suppressed the uprising using attack helicopters and firing squads, in events where tens of thousands of people were killed.

Since then, American presidents have been more careful about calls to encourage rebellions in foreign countries. President Barack Obama was criticized by both parties in 2009 after he refused to explicitly encourage the "Green Movement" protests in Iran, for fear that it would lead to a massacre of the protesters. He later admitted that the caution he showed might have been a mistake.

According to Fontaine, of all of Trump's promises to the Iranians, the help in their liberation was the most significant, especially because the killing of the protesters in January was perceived as a factor that contributed to the United States' shift to a more aggressive military policy against Iran.

"The biggest losers of everything that happened this year are the residents of Iran," he said. "Now they have a country devastated by war, an economy whose situation is even worse than it was before, but the same predatory and essentially tyrannical regime that ruled them even before. In some ways, it's the worst of all worlds."

Maryam, a 27-year-old nurse from Tehran, said that she participated in protests against the regime as early as 2022, when she was beaten with batons and saw people bleeding in the streets. According to her, that year she went out to protest out of solidarity. This year she returned to the streets because she wanted justice for what the regime did to her people - and not because Trump called on her to do so.

Today she describes her situation as a combination of "fear and hope." According to her, she fears that "the blood that was spilled will be forgotten and will not receive attention," but at the same time she refuses to lose hope. "For us, despair would be a betrayal of the blood of our children," she said.

According to her, she still believes that it is possible that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have a plan for the Iranian people. However, in the end, she believes that Iranians can only rely on each other.

"Our uprising was our choice - a reaction to the regime's crimes and a movement aimed at toppling the system," she said. "Whether Trump helps now or not, it does not change our determination. We thank him for the support, but our struggle does not depend on it."