The cry of freedom lives in every human soul. You can hear it echoing right now through the streets of Iran, where ordinary people have decided they would rather die than live on their knees. They are standing up to bullets and batons with empty hands, screaming the same truth humanity has always known: give me liberty or give me death. That ideal is not uniquely American. It is unmistakably human.

Footage pouring out of Iran shows crowds flooding the streets, men and women risking everything to be part of something bigger than themselves—even if the price is their own lives. The cost has already been staggering. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands by some estimates, have been killed as the Islamic regime has responded with brutal force to crush the protests.

It is difficult to know the full scope of the bloodshed because the regime has done what tyrannies always do when they are afraid: it has turned off the internet. Silence is a weapon. When the internet is cut, violence happens in the dark. Only a handful of Iranians with access to Starlink have been able to get word out at all. The regime fears truth, visibility, and unity—because being seen saves lives. That is precisely why Elon Musk has worked to make Starlink available in Iran.

But even the internet has limits when faced with a regime determined to cling to power at any cost.

Viral footage shows exactly what kind of evil the Iranian people are confronting. In one video, the Islamic regime’s military storms a hospital—not a battlefield, not a weapons cache, but a place of healing—simply to get their hands on protesters who survived the initial crackdown. They tear-gassed the building, fired live weapons, smashed doors, and dragged wounded protesters out of their hospital beds. Doctors, nurses, patients—anyone in the way—were beaten with batons.

This is evil on a scale most Americans can barely comprehend. And yet this is precisely the sort of human rights horror that social justice warriors claim to live for.

So where are they?

Where are the “Free Palestine” protesters now? Where are the rallies, the signs, the chants, the moral outrage? They are nowhere to be found—and the reason is painfully obvious. The same ideology that enslaves Iran is the one many of them are defending in the name of Palestine. The modern left is often more passionate about defending Islam as an idea than about confronting the very real human rights abuses committed by an Islamic regime.

To understand just how brutal that regime truly is, listen to those who have lived under it.

Those “Free Palestine” college activists wouldn’t recognize that kind of conviction if it stared them in the face. They sit comfortably in protest tents with Starbucks oat milk lattes, waving signs for an ideology that treats its opponents exactly as that man described, while real people in Iran are risking their lives to escape it.

Even CNN’s Van Jones manages to grasp the truth—proof that even a broken clock can be right twice a day.

He ought to shout it from the rooftops, because the rest of his party has chosen silence.

That silence is nothing new. Democrats have a long history of landing on the wrong side of history. In 2020, they attacked Donald Trump for taking out Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani.

Then in 2025, they attacked him again for destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities. Both times they predicted catastrophe. Both times they were wrong. And now, when there is an actual war underway—a war against Iranian citizens—their outrage is nowhere to be found.

When Iranians rose up in 2009, Barack Obama sided with the mullahs. Donald Trump, by contrast, has sided with those yearning to be free. He stands with a people who have endured 47 years of abuse under a theocratic dictatorship. That difference has not gone unnoticed inside Iran.

An Iranian journalist explains how her people have felt under tyranny during different U.S. administrations.

Strength matters. The Iranian people respect strength, and they look to a strong American president. The Islamic regime knows this too—which is why it fears Trump.

This week alone, Trump issued new threats against the Ayatollah and the IRGC.

Iranian threats of retaliation against the United States ring hollow. They did not retaliate when their nuclear facilities were destroyed, because they know exactly who holds the advantage militarily. If they start something, they know who will finish it.

That reality may explain why, according to Trump, the regime has begun to ease its crackdown—at least for now.

Trusting Iran is never wise, and time will tell how this unfolds. But one thing is clear: the people of Iran trust Trump. By all accounts, he is remarkably popular there.

One message sent from inside Iran using Starlink made its way to American media and said it plainly:

“I have to emphasize that among Iranian people, Trump is the most popular person right now. He has so much popularity because of the steps that he took toward preventing the growth of terrorism in the Middle East. They respect him.”

Democrats can hurl insults and call Trump a dictator if they want. The rest of the world sees something very different. They see a leader willing to stand up to actual dictators—and that is why Iranians, risking their lives for freedom, are sending messages like these into the darkness.