US sent ‘a lot’ of arms to Iranian protesters – Trump
The US sent “a lot” of weapons to Iranian protesters during unrest in the country in January, President Donald Trump has said.
The demonstrations, initially driven by economic grievances and marred by violence, were openly incited at the time by Trump, who threatened the Iranian authorities with retaliation for suppressing the unrest. Tehran described the demonstrations as foreign-instigated and accused the US and Israel of fueling the movement, blaming armed provocateurs for deadly clashes.
In a phone interview on Sunday, Trump told Fox News reporter Trey Yingst that Washington had carried out a covert effort to arm demonstrators. He claimed the plan had little effect because Kurdish intermediaries kept the weapons instead of delivering them.
On Monday, the president again spoke about the US role in the Iranian protests, telling journalists that “we sent guns, a lot of guns, they were supposed to go to the people so they could fight back against these thugs.”
“You know what happened? The people that they sent them to kept them. So I’m very upset with a certain group of people, and they’re going to pay a big price for that,” Trump said, without mentioning the Kurds specifically.
Tehran UN envoy Amir Saeid Iravani sent a letter to the UN Security Council (UNSC) on Monday, urging the body to take action against the US after it admitted meddling in Iran’s internal affairs.
Trump’s statements mean that Washington now bears full responsibility for the deaths and destruction caused by the Iranian protests, the envoy insisted.
The arming of demonstrators constitutes “a flagrant violation of the UN Charter and the fundamental principles and rules of international law,” he said.
According to Iravani, Washington’s conduct was a continuation of its “long-standing policy of creating, financing and arming terrorist groups in the Middle East and beyond.”
During the early stages of the Iranian protests, former CIA chief Mike Pompeo – who led the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran in Trump’s first administration – praised the rioting, sending his regards to protesters and “every Mossad agent walking beside them.”
In mid-March, the New York Times reported that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency sought to “galvanize the Iranian opposition” during the early phase of the US-Israeli bombing campaign launched on February 28.
Mossad chief David Barnea reportedly presented a destabilization plan to the Trump administration in January. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited the agency’s optimism in making the case to Trump for military action.
However, instead of being overthrown by a mass uprising alongside targeted assassination of Iranian leaders, Tehran consolidated its control. A Kurdish offensive in Iran, which Trump had also encouraged, did not materialize either.
The US has a long history of supplying arms to groups aligned with its strategic goals. In the 1980s, the CIA supported jihadist insurgents in Afghanistan fighting Soviet forces. More recently, the Obama administration authorized the Timber Sycamore program in Syria, intended to help ‘moderate rebels’ topple the government in Damascus, which ended up strengthening radical Islamist factions.
