Why are hawks in US unnerved by Ayatollah Khamenei’s letter to US students

By Mohsen Badakhsh

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has hailed the US campus movement against the Israeli-American genocidal war on Gaza as a righteous endeavor, which he rightly states has placed them on the right side of history.

“Dear university students in the United States of America, this message is an expression of our empathy and solidarity with you. As the page of history is turning, you are standing on the right side of it,” reads the letter from Ayatollah Khamenei, describing them as the new “branch of the Resistance Front.”

“You have now formed a branch of the Resistance Front and have begun an honorable struggle in the face of your government's ruthless pressure—an administration that openly backs the usurper and brutal Zionist regime,” the letter adds.

Noting that the greater Resistance Front has been resolutely engaged for decades in the struggle to end “the blatant oppression that the brutal Zionist terrorist network has inflicted on the Palestinian nation,” Ayatollah Khamenei described Palestine as an independent land—comprising Muslims, Christians, and Jews—with a long history.

In honoring the pro-Palestine movement initiated by students at Columbia University, which has now expanded to many other universities across the US and other countries, Ayatollah Khamenei assured of imminent changes in the global state of affairs.

“A different fate awaits the important region of West Asia,” he vowed. “The conscience of people has been awakened on a global scale, and the truth is coming to light... as the Resistance Front is gaining further strength and getting even mightier.”

He reiterated that history is about to turn a page, clearly suggesting impending developments favoring the long-oppressed nation of Palestine and the Resistance Front.

Despite the total news blackout of Ayatollah Khamenei’s letter by mainstream Western media conglomerates, his message has already been welcomed by millions on social media platforms, which has enraged several pro-Israel American lawmakers with a track record of accepting bribes and campaign funds from powerful pressure groups in Washington lobbying for the Zionist regime.

Take, for example, this rhetoric labeling their own constituents in the US who have exercised their basic constitutional right of free expression to protest Washington’s open support for Israel’s genocidal war against thousands of innocent women and children in Gaza and the rest of occupied Palestine.

“When you’ve won the Ayatollah, you’ve lost America,” wrote top US lawmaker and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson in a Friday post on X while reacting to the message of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution to US college students standing up for Palestine.

The hawkish, pro-Trump lawmaker labeled protesting US students as “aspiring terrorists” in an interview later, adding that he would ensure college professors and students involved in the protests would be “hauled” to the US Congress to be grilled and potentially punished.

His remarks came after presidents of several top universities across the US were forced to step down after being censured by pro-Israel American lawmakers for allowing their students to stage protests opposing US support for atrocities committed against Palestinians by the Zionist regime.

The forced resignations of the university presidents were attributed to the institutions’ high dependency on massive government contracts and funding.

Another furious reaction to Ayatollah Khamenei’s letter to US students came from Democratic Party Congressman Ritchie John Torres of New York, who angrily claimed that the praising of American students by Iran’s top leader meant that they are “useful idiots on the wrong side of history.”

Evidently, the responses by American lawmakers to the letter lacked any rationale and did not in any form challenge its content or reasoning. They only attack American students and professors using hostile and offensive words that attest to their low character and intellect.

Meanwhile, developments in the US prior to and after the release of Ayatollah Khamenei’s message honoring American college students are quite indicative of America’s sorry state of affairs and its shaky political landscape ahead of the November presidential polls.

Just days before the release of the letter, former president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump attacked the student protest movement against the Zionist regime, vowing to “throw out” students that attend such protests if he returns to the White House.

Speaking to a small group of predominantly Zionist Jewish donors at an event, Trump insisted that he will deport all pro-Palestinian student protesters to ensure that they “behave.”

“One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave,” Trump said, before he was criminally convicted in a New York courtroom on over 30 counts of financial and political corruption pertaining to his 2016 presidential campaign that led to his surprise victory.

Just after the release of Ayatollah Khamenei’s letter to American students, Trump’s top political foe and presidential rival, Joe Biden, was reportedly scrambling to put together yet another purported ceasefire proposal to halt the Israeli regime’s genocidal war on Gaza. This came amid reports that US bombs and other ammunition supplied by the Biden administration were again used in last week’s massacre of mostly women and children in a refugee camp in Gaza’s border city of Rafah, neighboring Egypt.

Biden’s renewed scheme to introduce another ceasefire plot came amid growing media reports about his struggling re-election campaign in the face of his dwindling popularity across the country and particularly in the so-called battleground states, where voter support for both presidential contenders is equally divided. Even a narrow loss in the popular vote count spells the total loss of the state’s entire electoral vote that determines the outcome of the US presidential poll.

Considering the worldview and autocratic attitudes of American political leaders and the intensifying divisiveness and hostilities between the dominant political parties, as widely reported by the local media, many observers do not expect the next US presidential and congressional elections to be without controversies, giving credence to Ayatollah Khamenei’s indication of a turning page of history.

The Leader of the Islamic Revolution has repeatedly lauded the resistance of Palestinians and other resistance groups in the region against the Israeli regime’s West-backed genocidal atrocities in Gaza, underlining the “certain victory” of the resistance forces in the near future and the ultimate defeat of the Zionist occupiers—another indication of the page of history turning.

Recently, after the tragic death of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raeisi and his companions in a helicopter crash, Ayatollah Khamenei hosted leaders of the Hamas resistance group in Tehran along with resistance leaders from other countries in the region.

He also met with visiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday, hailing his nation’s perseverance in remaining a robust force in the region against the Zionist occupiers.

Such public meetings with leading resistance figures mark a significant turning point in the long struggle against the brutal occupation of Palestine by the Israeli regime, as described by Iran’s brave leader.

It is noteworthy to remember the founder of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini, who first initiated and set forth the idea of global resistance to liberate Palestine and al-Quds (Jerusalem) from the US-backed Zionist occupation.

Driven by God’s commandments in the holy book of Qur’an, Imam Khomeini fearlessly stood up against the powerful United States, severed all ties with the then-apartheid regime of South Africa and the Israeli Zionist entity, and replaced its embassy in Tehran with the embassy of Palestine.

Ayatollah Khamenei followed the same path and brilliantly preserved and strengthened the legacy of the founder of the Islamic Revolution as is evident today.

Mohsen Badakhsh is an educator and freelance journalist.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.

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