Trump on ‘The Five’ says Iran regime snipers shooting protesters to stop dissent
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President Donald Trump said Thursday during a wide-ranging phone interview on Fox News’ “The Five” that Iranians cannot physically protest their government because demonstrators have been shot by regime forces, including snipers.
Trump made the remark when asked about the Iranian people during a broader discussion about Iran on the show.
The comments come as Trump seeks to draw a distinction between Iran’s leadership and its civilian population, arguing that the regime maintains control through violence while defending U.S. actions targeting its military capabilities as part of Operation Epic Fury.
“They’re horrified that one side has weapons, and they have very bad weapons,” Trump said. “And what they do is they shoot you, and people are brave, but they’re not brave when they see people attacking left and right. I don’t care who you are, how brave you are, unless you’re really stupid or really stupid.”
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Iranian students at Al-Zahra University protested in anti-government demonstrations in Tehran in February. (Reuters)
Trump argued that fear of deadly retaliation prevented widespread demonstrations across the country.
“The only reason they’re not protesting is because they’re being shot one after another, and they’re doing it with snipers,” he said.
Trump noted past protests led by women in Iran, claiming demonstrators were met with lethal force.
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Iranians gathered by blocking a street during a protest in Tehran on January 9. (MAHSA / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images)
“It all started with women,” Trump said. “You remember about a year ago, we had 250,000 women. Well, there were women who were shot between the eyes by snipers, there were four or five snipers in buildings that were quite tall and some distance away.”
He described demonstrators falling under gunfire and said that was enough to disperse crowds.
“When you’re a man or a woman, frankly, when you see one person fall to the ground with a bad brain hemorrhage, and then you see another person on the other side, and then you see five or 6 or 7, that’s it,” Trump said. “You ran away, they ran away and never came back.”
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President Donald Trump gestures before boarding Air Force One. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump also said the regime issued direct warnings to deter protests.
“And if you noticed, about two weeks ago, they issued a statement saying that if you protest, we will shoot you,” he said. “They’re killing them.”
“The people are brave,” Trump added, but said public protest had become nearly impossible “when they saw people going left and right.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Trump also repeated his claims about Iran’s leadership when asked if intelligence officials had told him that “Ayetollah Kucuk” (aka Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) was gay.
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“Yes, they said that, but I don’t know if they were the only ones who said it,” Trump said. “I think a lot of people say that.”
While the talks continued, he argued that the Iranian regime had been weakened in recent months within the scope of Operation Epic Rage.
The interview was published at a time when Trump was trying to distinguish between the regime and the Iranian people while defending US action against Iran.
