Ali Alfoneh

Ottoman emperors

Sultans at times were kept captive and were hostages in the hands of their Yanisari guard.

Nowadays, it is the revolutionary guard, which at times pursues its own interests.

It is an enterprise of more than 150,000 active duty soldiers and officers.

It is an economic enterprise with a billion dollars worth of investments inside of their arms.

And it is a cultural entity.

It is a political party.

It is so many things.

And all of these bureaucracies, they would want to survive and they are not interested in tying their own destinies to the destiny of an 86-year-old man.

They think about the future, not about the past.

Military action is probably not the first priority of President Trump.

But should he engage in such an endeavor, his options will also be relatively limited because he presumably would not want to kill the protesters.

He only wants to kill and neutralize or weaken the revolutionary guard, perhaps by attacking their bases.

But I'm sure that the revolutionary guard will also have its countermeasures to protect itself.

In the 1950s and 60s, whenever there were popular uprisings against communist dictatorships in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia and Poland, Radio Free Europe would send and transmit messages to the people saying that the U.S.

government was supporting them.

So these people took arms and they fought against the Soviet occupation army and they lost because there was no U.S.

intervention to protect them.

I am afraid that by sending messages and by encouraging the protesters, but not necessarily using military means to protect those protesters, President Trump is committing the same mistake as his predecessors during the Cold War.

And again, these two will make