Remember when the so-called Arab Spring was sweeping through the Middle East? Obama gave a big thumbs up when it hit places like Libya, or Eogypt, Yemen or Syria.
Dissidents in Iran were poised to join in the push for riots and reforms, but never got the green light for the revolution from potential allies in the West.
Just when it looked like freedom would finally come to those who had been suffering badly at the hand of the Iranian regime, Obama stood in the way.
The Arab Spring’s failure connects back to Barack Obama’s lack of action ten years ago. After the former president’s famous Cairo speech in 2009, in which he talked about a “new beginning” for US foreign policy in the region, many expected that he would help install democracy once the protests started. But this was not the case.
Blindsided and unprepared for the uprisings – and also fearful of getting bogged down in the Middle East the way the previous administration had after the War on Terror and the 2003 invasion of Iraq – Obama was cautious of anything that looked like a US project to promote democracy. Perhaps overly so. He thought he could simply let autocratic rulers – such as Bashar al-Assad in Syria – fall, and democracy would take care of itself. — The Conversation
Elections have consequences. That includes allowing Iran to ride out a national uprising.
In the last year or two, we have seen violent crackdowns in Iran over the improper use of (or failure to wear) the hijab. Having your hair peek out from a head scarf has been a punishible offence.
Iranian authorities have whipped a woman 74 times for ‘violating public morals’ and fined her for refusing to wear a hijab while walking through the streets of Tehran.
Roya Heshmati, 33, was lashed with a leather whip and also forced to pay a fine equivalent to £255 after she ‘encouraged permissiveness’ by walking around in public without covering her head.
Writing on her now-locked social media page, Heshmati explained how she was beaten mercilessly across her back, legs and buttocks in a dank room she likened to a medieval torture chamber – but still refused to wear a hijab in the courtroom even after the ordeal.
‘[The lashing] was over. We left the room. I didn’t let them think I had experienced pain… We went up to the judge in charge of execution of the sentence. The female agent walked behind me and was careful not to let my headscarf drop from my head.
‘I threw off my scarf at the courtroom entrance. The woman asked me to wear the headscarf. I didn’t stop and she pulled it over my head again,’ she wrote.
The brutal punishment triggered widespread outcry on social media, with Abbas Abdi, one of Iran’s leading journalists and social activists writing: ‘These lashes did not just come down on the body of one woman, they hit all those who dream of a life with normal freedoms alongside each other. — DailyMail
When the political right denounces the practice of forcing women to wear a hijab — and punishing failure to comply — there is often sharp resistance from the left who have knee-jerk sympathy to anything Islam. And why wouldn’t they, after being conditioned to equate criticism of an oppressive practice with a ‘phobia’?
It’s one thing for women to choose, for modesty’s sake, to wear religious clothing. It’s quite another to have a gun put to your head. And yet, the left suddenly forgets all of their talking points about patriarchy and yass-girl freedoms when those questions are set against a backdrop of Islam.
Hopefully, a woman being beaten to within an inch of her life because she wants to have her hair uncovered will give them pause to re-think their loyalties on this issue.
Cue the meme…
In case the Iran-regime defenders are stumped by that question, the answer is ‘yes’.
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