Since the protests in Iran began six days ago — and President Trump has repeatedly tweeted his support for the dissidents — prominent Iranian exile groups and opponents of the Tehran regime have voiced praise for the U.S. president.
Which leads to the question — one I asked the White House Tuesday — is Trump in direct contact with the Iranian exile community in the U.S.?
Press secretary Sarah Sanders would not say, one way or another: "I'm not aware of any conversations, and certainly not directly between the president. But I'd have to verify that no one in the administration has had those conversations. I'm just not prepared to answer that extensively.”
As the protests were beginning on Saturday, and Trump issued his first strong statement of support, Ali Safavi, an official of the Washington office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), contrasted the president’s words with Obama's during the last major protests in 2009.
"President Trump’s expression of support for the Iranian people and his condemnation of the arrests of the protests send an encouraging signal to all those who want to see Iran liberated from the yoke of the medievalist mullahs," Safavi told Newsmax.
Founded in 1981, the NCRI represents political figures, academicians, and other Iranians who have fled their homeland, are dedicated to the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and its replacement with a secular democracy.
On Sunday, Christian Pastor Saeed Abedini, a former prisoner of the Iranian regime for three years, told Newsmax that the demonstrators’ chant of “Leave Syria alone, do something for us” was almost precisely what Trump said in his U.N. speech on Sept. 19.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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