A new Iran protest, a harsher US response, yet it may end the same

US President Donald Trump has won plaudits for vocally supporting mass protests that have broken out in Iran, drawing favorable contrasts with predecessor Barack Obama’s more moderate approach to demonstrations in 2009.

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“I think the responses are about 180 degrees apart,” said Jonathan Schanzer, a senior vice president at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a conservative Washington think tank. “The Obama administration waited for quite a long time to respond, then ultimately decided it was not an American interest to get involved.”

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“The reason you have these protests, I think, is because you have a huge dissonance between the regime in Iran and the people in Iran,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iranian-American and a senior Iran analyst for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “The reason you have that dissonance is because the activities of the regime don’t reflect the interests or the values of its people.”

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