“Freedom is in your hands”

The speech given this Saturday by the president of the United States, Donald Trump, a few minutes after beginning his great offensive against Iran, has made it clear that the final objective of the operation is the elimination of the power structures installed in the Islamic republic in 1979: the clerical establishment and the Revolutionary Guard, the ideological foundation of the Iranian Army, as well as the symbolic achievement par excellence that is its nuclear program.

In the midst of attacks against the seats of Iranian power in Tehran, including ministries and even the compound of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump has urged the total and absolute surrender of the Iranian Army and Police, to whom he has promised an amnesty, and to force the definitive uprising of the population against the clerical establishment. “I tell the Iranian people that the hour of their freedom is within their reach,” Trump said, regarding an attack that will represent “the only opportunity” they will have “for generations” to overthrow the Iranian authorities.

“Take the reins of your destiny and unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is within your reach. This is the time to act,” stressed Trump, who has addressed the security forces in much harsher terms: “To the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces and all the Police, I say tonight that you must lay down your arms. You will be treated fairly and with total immunity or you will face certain death.”

In a direct message to the Revolutionary Guard troops, he told them that if they hand over their weapons they will be treated fairly. He has also warned them that if they do not do so, they will face “certain death.” Trump also addressed the people of Iran, telling them that “the hour of freedom is within reach” of their hands.

Proof of the historical burden of Trump’s speech has been the review he has carried out through crisis after crisis, starting with the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran in October 1979, to a current reality in which he has accused “the allies of the Iranian regime”, in reference, for example, to the pro-Iranian militias operating in Iraq or the Houthis in Yemen, “of continuing to launch countless attacks against the US forces stationed in the Middle East, as well as against U.S. naval and commercial vessels and international shipping routes.”

Trump has promised and emphasized that Iran will never have the atomic bomb, no matter how much the Iranian authorities have insisted ad nauseum that its nuclear program, achieved last summer in another US and Israeli military operation, is not offensive in nature. “They will never be able to have a nuclear weapon,” said the US president before accusing Iran of having rejected all possible offers, as well as trying to rebuild its nuclear program “and continue developing long-range missiles.”

“For these reasons, the United States Army is carrying out a massive operation to prevent this very perverse and radical dictatorship from threatening the United States and our fundamental national security interests. We are going to destroy its missiles and reduce its missile industry to nothing. It will be totally destroyed, once again,” he promised.

The US president has warned that he is contemplating a bloody scenario that could cost the lives of Americans. “My government has taken every measure possible to minimize the risk to American personnel in the region. Still, and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of brave American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties,” he estimated.

All of this “for the future” of the world, in “a noble mission” to “ensure that the United States and its children are never threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran.” “We ask God to protect all our heroes in danger, and we trust that, with his help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail. We have the best in the world, and they will prevail,” he concluded.