Terry Glavin: There's a revolution going on in the Mideast. Why doesn't the West see that?

Iranian protesters hold flowers as riot police fire tear gas during a demonstration in front of Tehran's Amir Kabir University on Jan. 13, 2020. AFP via Getty Images

It is necessary to highlight that since last October, hundreds of thousands of protesters have been running through the streets of Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon, Bekaa and Khaldeh in an uprising that has brought the corrupt, incompetent and committed government to Hezbollah of Lebanon on its knees. Likewise, during the fuss on Tuesday night, 59 people were arrested and the Red Cross reports at least 37 seriously injured.

Certainly in Iran, protesters have been more disciplined, but their cause is the same. They want the overthrow of a corrupt and incompetent regime, termination of the entire political system, or at least the overthrow of the regime’s theocratic dictator, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and all his accomplices and acolytes.

Since last Saturday, when the Hassan Rouhani government was forced to admit that its officials had been lying, and it was the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that shot down Ukraine International Airlines flight 752, killing 176 passengers, an uprising that began last.

Total chaos

It is necessary to indicate that long before the president of the United States, Donald Trump, ordered the launch of a Hellfire missile from a drone Reaper that surrounded the Baghdad airport to eliminate Qassem Soleimani, the notorious terrorist chief of Iran, the pro-democratic uprising had already plunged Iraq into its worst crisis since it was led by the United States.

Meanwhile, in Syria, the Khomeinist satrap Bashar al-Assad and the Russian air force continued their immolation of the towns and cities of Idlib this week. Idlib is Syria’s last governorate outside the regime’s control, and its conquest is the bloody outcome of what began as a pro-democratic uprising in 2011. At least 300,000 Syrians have been left homeless in recent weeks. The number of Syrian deaths now exceeds half a million people.

It is the “recent escalation” that reveals Trudeau’s unfortunate lack of familiarity with the course of events throughout the Middle East over the past decade, a bloody “escalation” that did not begin with Trump. It is an “escalation” that has led to the greatest refugee crisis since World War II and the bloodiest disorders since the implosion of the Ottoman Empire that followed World War I.

Thus, it has been said that it is perhaps understandable that some of the candidates in the ongoing contest for the Democratic ticket in the November presidential elections may suggest such an extravagant scenario, facing Trump as the arch-enemy of the last drama.

Source: Terry Glavin | National Post