Don’t make the mistake Obama did, Mr. President, enforce your Iran ‘red line’

The last time a US president drew a “red line” and refused to enforce it, thousands of Syrians paid the price.

Barack Obama’s 2012 failure to enforce his red line against the use of chemical weapons by the now-ousted Assad regime in Syria for the fear of empowering jihadists shattered American credibility.

It also emboldened America’s adversaries, Russia and Iran, to continue propping up Assad’s murderous rule.

Obama’s stance was an extension of the same weakness he displayed when Iran’s population took to the streets to protest the rigged vote of 2009, which resulted in the re-election of Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president.

Instead, he sought to quietly engage with the Iranians to enter nuclear negotiations.

So far, Trump has not looked like a similar pushover.

He has now issued a major promise to the Iranian people, whose current fight for freedom has already resulted in more than 12,000 killed.

Trump must not hesitate or allow external distractions, from Cuba to Greenland, to dilute that commitment if he is to avoid a repeat of Obama’s error.

When red lines are not enforced, the cost of inaction hits both the affected population and America’s own credibility.

Obama warned the Assad regime in 2012 that a “red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around.”

Assad responded with a sarin gas strike on the town of Ghouta, where witnesses described “young children convulsing, their open mouths slick with foam; stiff, unbloodied corpses lined up in rows on hospital floors.”

Obama’s reticence was followed by repeated chemical attacks, deeper Russian and Iranian entrenchment, and a Syrian regime emboldened by the realization that the United States would not enforce its own red lines.

The scenes now emerging from Iran are as harrowing as those from Syria.

Footage and eyewitness accounts describe “dozens, perhaps hundreds, of bodies laid out inside a warehouse,” while in other locations, bodies were reportedly “lined up on a tarmac for several hundred meters.”

Despite Trump’s threats of intervention, the Islamic Republic has shown little restraint in violently suppressing protesters.

Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, even mocked the president, opining, “Trump says things like this a lot. Do not take him seriously.”

Trump can prove him wrong by demonstrating that when he tells the Iranian people, “Help is on the way,” he means it.

There is recent precedent as well: During the 12-day war between Israel and Iran last June, Trump warned that the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities would not be spared.

Operation Midnight Hammer, which severely degraded Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, duly followed.

Tehran’s expectations should be no different now: Dismissing Trump’s threats must have consequences.

History will judge both Trump and the United States harshly if Washington fails the Iranian people in this moment — just as it judged Obama harshly for turning a blind eye to Syria.

The moment to remind the Islamic Republic and other American adversaries that the United States follows through on its commitments has arrived.

Washington has an array of tools at its disposal — such as seizing oil shipments to choke off the regime’s revenues, restoring Internet access after days of state-enforced blackout, or conducting targeted cyber operations to disrupt the regime’s repression apparatus.

If the mass killing of civilians continues, the United States should be prepared to escalate further and use targeted military options.

Standing down would not only discourage the masses of Iranians who have yet again risked their lives to confront the ruling ayatollahs.

It would tell the world that the United States is a paper tiger — at the very time that Washington most needs to make its roar heard.

Ahmad Sharawi is a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on Middle East affairs and the Levant.