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On Saturday, just under two weeks into the protests that are now sweeping Iran, United States President Donald Trump took to his social media platform of choice to post a message of support<\/a>: \u201cIran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP.\u201d<\/p>\n As usual, Trump\u2019s random capitalisation scheme and excessive use of exclamation points would better befit an elementary schoolchild than the leader of the global superpower. But the promise of American help is also problematic in far more significant ways.<\/p>\n For starters, \u201chelp\u201d is not exactly a specialty of the US \u2013 and particularly not under the guidance of the man who bombed Iran just last summer, right after returning to power on a pledge to keep the US out of foreign wars.<\/p>\n Trump is furthermore responsible for maintaining a crippling sanctions regime against the Islamic Republic, thereby fuelling the high inflation that triggered the present protests in the first place. As is par for the course in such forms of economic warfare, the nonelite of Iran have paid the highest price.<\/p>\n In addition to constituting a departure from his whole \u201cAmerica First\u201d premise, Trump\u2019s recent offer of \u201chelp\u201d to the Iranians marks a shift in presidential rhetoric vis-a-vis the much-maligned country. Previously, the Trumpian discourse mainly targeted Iran\u2019s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles equipped with chemical and biological warheads \u2013 all of which were marketed as a dangerous threat not only to the US but also to America\u2019s BFF and current regional partner in genocide, the state of Israel.<\/p>\n Now, however, Trump is in \u201crescue\u201d mode, warning<\/a> this month that \u201cif Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.\u201d<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Trump assured Iranian protesters that \u201chelp is on the way\u201d without elaborating as to what this might consist of. Right-wing US media have pitched in with such encouraging headlines<\/a> as \u201cTrump has historic chance to help topple Iran\u2019s America-hating regime.\u201d<\/p>\n For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has chimed in with the affirmation that Israel supports the Iranian protesters\u2019 \u201cstruggle for freedom and firmly condemns the mass killings of innocent civilians\u201d \u2013 quite the statement from someone who has been presiding over the genocide of Palestinians for more than two years.<\/p>\n With his recent promises of assistance, one can\u2019t help but wonder if Trump isn\u2019t taking a page from the old playbook of former US President George W Bush, the ex-\u201cwar on terror\u201d chief and the face of an administration that was dedicated to propagating the very neo-conservative ideology to which Trump has long ostensibly been so vehemently opposed.<\/p>\n In essence, the neo-con objective is to wreak military havoc throughout the world using democracy promotion and other superficially nice ideas as an excuse for deadly imperial expansion. And while Trump successfully wooed many US voters with his alleged commitment to abandoning such pursuits in far-off lands in favour of total self-absorption and \u201cmaking America great again\u201d, it seems the neo-conservative impulse is hard to kick.<\/p>\n To be sure, Trump\u2019s presidency recalls Bush\u2019s in more ways than one. Both men possess clownish demeanours \u2013 not to mention an intriguing relationship with English grammar and spelling \u2013 that would be entirely amusing if not for the extensive bloodshed over which they have respectively presided.<\/p>\n Likewise, both men have proven disproportionately eager to invoke God as an ally in their destructive endeavours.<\/p>\n Despite Trump\u2019s professed opposition to the policy of regime change and the Bush-era interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan \u2013 part of a \u201cwar on terror\u201d that ultimately left millions of people dead \u2013 he has in his first year back in office managed to bomb an assortment of nations as well as kidnap the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro.<\/p>\n Florida Congressman Randy Fine, who has just introduced a bill<\/a> that would permit Trump to annex Greenland, has also taken to X to propose<\/a> that \u201cMaybe we should Maduro Khamenei.\u201d In this case, \u201cKhamenei\u201d refers to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei while \u201cMaduro\u201d functions as a brand-new verb for abducting the leader of a sovereign state.<\/p>\n But as Trump now promises that the US is \u201cready to help!!!\u201d Iran, it\u2019s worth thinking back on other instances of American \u201chelp!!!\u201d in the country \u2013 like that time in 1953 that the CIA engineered a coup d\u2019etat against democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, which set the stage for the long reign of the torture-happy shah of Iran, who was finally overthrown by the Iranian Revolution in 1979.<\/p>\n