Why Trump was able to overthrow the dictators of Iran and secure his place in history
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The difference between the illusion of power and its reality is the difference between Ayatollah Khamenei and President Donald Trump. Trump is poised to join a very small number of American presidents who have reshaped the world. Khamenei is at the top of the abyss of history reserved for murderous fanatics. If Trump advises Khamenei on that border, the president’s place in history will be secured. He will then restore freedom to the great people of Persia.
Believing in the unlimited power of a totalitarian government to preserve itself and protect its rulers is a dangerous arrogance, as both Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Venezuela’s Nicholas Maduro have discovered. Ayatollah Khamenei may be in the process of discovering the same hard truth: No government, no matter how brutal, can endure for centuries or decades in the face of an enraged population.
Even Roman emperors at the height of Caesar or the Severan dynasty, were not guaranteed eternal rule. The Soviet Union, which had both nuclear weapons and a ubiquitous security service, only survived from 1922 to 1991.
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The Assad family took power in 1971 when Hafez Al-Assad consolidated control of Syria and maintained it until December 2024, when his son and other family members were forced to flee to Russia.
“Papa Doc” Duvalier took power in Haiti in 1957 and held it until his death in 1971. He was succeeded by his son Jean-Claude Duvalier, nicknamed “Baby Doc,” who was forced to flee in February 1986.
Hugo Chavez first tried to gain power through a coup d’état in Venezuela in 1992, he failed and then won power in 1999, which he never gave up until his death, when Nicholas Maduro took over the police state until this month, when the American military assisted American law enforcement on the orders of President Trump to release Maduro from the prison cell in New York.
The American government is tolerant because it depends on the consent of the governed. Any political enterprise that does not enjoy, at best, the arbitrary control imposed by the revolutionary efforts of a people who desire freedom and prosperity.
We are watching in real time the third attempt of the Iranian people to throw off the shackles of the “Islamic Republic of Iran,” which was installed by the fanatic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, which oppressed the Iranian people for decades. Khomeini ousted the Shah of Iran in 1979 and now the Shah’s son may return as a constitutional monarch to replace Khomeini’s hand-picked successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This ayatollah is cruel as the first and hundreds are being slaughtered by his thugs in a desperate attempt to hold on to control of their kleptocracy, but the people of Iran have seen their life savings wiped out, their drinking water contaminated and their electricity subject to repeated blackouts. The country is in turmoil and, due to the humiliation of Israeli and American air and missile forces last summer, the people have begun their third week of mass protests. If the US or the Jewish state gives the last push, the great Persian people – older than Christianity by 500 years – will re-emerge and regain their place among the world’s great civilizations.
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Even as the mullahs and their shocked soldiers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tremble and fire their guns at hundreds of thousands of people, the dictatorship of Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba, who succeeded Fidel, and Raul Castro seems to be faltering. As in Venezuela, and in Syria and the Soviets before it, the Cuban regime relies on the illusion of permanence. But, their people cannot eat illusions or drink dreams.
Three times before Iran’s dictators faced serious challenges to their power, but each time – in the late 1990s, during the Green Movement of 2009 and in 2022 with the Iranian women’s movement widely known as “Woman, Life, Freedom,” – the power of the ayatollahs was challenged, but those challenges were not supported even by the encouraging words of the American presidents of the time. Ayatollah Khomeini took power when Jimmy Carter was in office, and Khamenei retained power during the aborted coups that took place under Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
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In the current turmoil in Iran, President Donald Trump has been a vocal supporter of the Iranian people who want freedom. As he did to Maduro, President Trump issued several warnings to Khamenei. As Maduro ignored them, so Khamenei responded by taunting the president of the United States. The ayatollah also cut off his nation’s internet and mobile services and ordered his thugs to open fire.
Will it work again? Neither knows. All we know is that oppressed people cannot be put down forever. And that the presidents who helped free them have received applause and respect from history.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show“Hear weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on the Salem News Channel. Hugh calls Americans home on the East Coast and lunch on the West Coast to more than 400 embassies across the country, and on every broadcast platform where SNC can be seen. He is a regular guest on Fox News Channel on the Brett news program at 6 pm. Ohio and graduation from Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. of television, MSN has also written for MSN television writers and moderated Republican debate scores, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in 2015-16 Hewitt focuses his radio show and column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians on and tens of thousands of Trump Republicans and Donald Bush’s 40 years in broadcasting.
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