OPINION:
Iran, Venezuela and Ukraine are very different countries, but most Iranians, Venezuelans and Ukrainians want the same thing: to not be ruled by tyrants.
They look to America for support, which means they look to President Trump. Where else and to whom else would they look? The United Nations? Sadly, that’s now a club for dictators headed by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a senescent socialist sycophant.
What about the “international community”? Oh, sure. Its capital is in Shangri-La, right? To qualify as a community, members must share values, interests and goals.
Millions of Iranians, Venezuelans and Ukrainians do share a kind of fellowship. One of the attributes they share: patriotism.
Ukrainian patriots understand that Vladimir Putin intends nothing less than the destruction of their sovereignty, independence, freedom, culture and language. He means to drag them back into the Russian/Soviet empire.
Venezuelan patriots recall with anger that their nation was once among the freest and wealthiest in Latin America. Then came Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, who made common cause with the anti-American rulers in Havana, Tehran, Moscow and Beijing. Since the mid-2000s, about 1 out of 4 Venezuelans have fled into exile.
In his “Islamic Government” collection of speeches, published in 1970 and leading up to the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for Iran’s clerical class to become its ruling class and for the spread of Islamic law, Shariah, to every corner of the planet.
In 1980, after the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Khomeini became the country’s first “supreme leader.” He was explicit about his willingness to sacrifice his nation on the altar of his theology.
“We do not worship Iran,” he reportedly said. “We worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”
Nearly a half-century later, the protesters on Iran’s streets have been chanting patriotic, anti-theocratic and anti-Islamist slogans, notably: “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, I sacrifice my life only for Iran!”
So far, Mr. Trump has been most successful in supporting the people of Venezuela. Since extracting Mr. Maduro, he has been making demands of the socialist regime stalwarts left in charge, warning that noncompliance could be hazardous to their health.
His plan for Venezuela has three stages. First, stabilize the situation, including the release of political prisoners (which has begun but is far from complete). Second, help Venezuela begin to recover economically. Third, facilitate a transition to a new and much-improved government. He will need to stay attentive to make progress and keep Secretary of State Marco Rubio in charge of the mission.
Mr. Trump’s strategy for negotiating an end to Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine has not been fruitful. In April, he suggested that the Russian dictator was playing him, pretending to be eager to end the war through diplomacy and compromise. That was a correct reading of the situation.
Mr. Putin appears untroubled by the fact that, over the past three years, roughly a quarter million Russian soldiers have been killed and at least 1 million have been wounded. Over this same period, how much Ukrainian territory has he purchased for this sea of blood? An additional 1.5% compared with what he occupied in the early months of the war.
Mr. Trump has now “greenlit” a bipartisan sanctions bill that would allow him to impose tariffs up to 500% on countries that continue to buy Mr. Putin’s oil. The bill has more than 80 Senate co-sponsors, but to get the House to go along, Mr. Trump will have to twist some arms. He should do that and much more to prevent Mr. Putin from achieving his ambitions.
As for Iran, Mr. Trump has urged protesters to “keep protesting.” He promised that “help is on the way” and said it’s “time to look for new leadership in Iran.”
He has imposed 25% tariffs on nations continuing to do business with Iran’s rulers so long as they are slaughtering protesters, which they are, including those they have imprisoned.
He can choose from a long list of additional steps — economic, cyber, kinetic — to weaken the regime, perhaps inhibit its brutality, empower the opposition and make clear that he has not been issuing idle threats against the mass murderers of defenseless Iranian civilians.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should not be given justification to repeat what Khomeini said when President Carter responded fecklessly after the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the taking of 66 Americans as hostages: “The Americans can’t do a damn thing against us!”
What Mr. Trump should avoid: letting his envoys get dragged into fruitless and endless palavers with the clerical regime’s cunning hucksters, as President Obama did.
When Mr. Trump began his second term in the White House a year ago this week, he could not have anticipated that three nations — one in South America, one in Europe and one in the Middle East — would soon be looking to him as their liberator and savior.
Although I don’t fancy myself an expert Trumpologist, my best guess is that he will take on that responsibility if he is confident that doing so will serve the American national interest.
My two-sentence argument that it does: The people of Iran, Venezuela and Ukraine are all fighting sworn enemies of Americans. That makes them the points of three American spears.
• Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.
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