Donald Trump vilifies Iran as moderate Hassan Rouhani wins major victory

Iran and its young, urbanized, westward-looking voters have thrown down the gauntlet to Donald Trump and America’s nuclear-pact deniers by handing a landslide reelection victory to their moderate President Hassan Rouhani.

Rouhani’s 57% absolute majority in a field of four candidates and especially over arch conservative Ebrahim Raisi, backed by the toxic Revolutionary Guard, all but demands a positive, even warm response from the West and especially President Trump. His supporters deserve at least some recognition that their pleas for help against the darkest forces of Islamic hatred and radicalism have been heard.

So far, alas, none of that has been forthcoming. Instead, the very morning of Rouhani’s extraordinary victory, President Trump was in Saudi Arabia, Iran’s paramount enemy in the region, bending over so that King Salman could place his nation’s highest honor, the King Abdul Aziz Collar,  around his neck. Then, the two nations signed a contract for immediate delivery of $110 billion in American arms, $350 billion over 10 years. It’s an arrangement celebrated by a U.S. statement that “this package of defense equipment and services supports the long-term security of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region in the face of malign Iranian influence and Iranian related threats.”

Finally, there was the president’s Sunday address with no gesture to the victory of a moderate on Friday in Iran, painting the Tehran regime as a vicious abettor of terrorism. How can that be considered anything but bellicose or deeply antagonistic, certainly an offensive slap at the open hand Rouhani and his millions of voters sought to extend?

Indeed, Rouhani made it explicit in a nationally televised victory statement: “Our nation's message in the election was clear: Iran's nation chose the path of interaction with the world, away from violence and extremism.” In short, a determined majority chose precisely the opposite of what Trump spent Rouhani’s victory weekend suggesting. Can an enormous arms deal and promise of ever larger piles of lucre blind the Trump administration to the   opportunity presented by the newly-elected Iranian leader, even if he has limited power to implement his moderate approach?

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The Rouhani victory poses a whole new set of challenges to Trump that he may be quite ill-equipped to accept, or certainly to act on.The people of Iran, especially the young people, are telling the West in no uncertain terms: We want to be part of your future, not stuck in a religious past.

Trump’s speech on Sunday struck any number of themes that would have sounded dissonant to Rouhani backers. His call for unity in the fight against radicalism in the Muslim world, casting the challenge as a "battle between good and evil” and urging Arab leaders to “drive out the terrorists from your places of worship,” is a clear dog whistle to the almost entirely Sunni audience assembled by King Salman.

He made no mention of the flagrant human rights abuses embraced by so many of the royal leaders gathered in the vast, gilded palace of the Saudi royal family, topics Arab leaders often view as U.S. moralizing. By this omission, Trump effectively gave license to these practices, suggesting that arms trump democratic values at every turn. “We are not here to lecture, to tell other peoples how to live, what to do or who to be. We are here instead to offer partnership in building a better future for us all,” Trump asserted — at least to all of the Sunni world that was so clearly his audience.

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It should not be forgotten that at the same point in his first term, Barack Obama went to Cairo for a speech televised live across the region and now seen widely as filled with empty promises. That new president flew off hours later, just as Trump did, leaving behind the region and its problems as he turned to more pressing issues at home.

One must ask whether Trump, at this moment, is the right person to be carrying any message of conciliation to the home of the two holiest sites of Islam — Mecca and Medina. Folks there have a long memory of the toxic messages of his campaign inveighing against their religion and all who practice it.

Trump told his audience Sunday that the war on terror is not a battle of religions. His speech will be watched as closely as Obama’s was eight years ago, although the two presidents were addressing dramatically different audiences. Obama was speaking to the Arab street. Trump is speaking to Arab leaders who have little interest in the street beyond bending it to their goal of staying in power.

David A. Andelman, member of the board of contributors of USA Today, is the author ofA Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today. He formerly served as s foreign correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News. Follow him on Twitter@DavidAndelman.

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