Beyond Venezuela: Growing Tension in Iran and Trump’s Quest for Oil | The Lincoln Logue

We are only four days into the new year, and we’ve already kidnapped the president of Venezuela, threatened Iran with military strikes, suggested military action against Mexico’s drug cartels, and let the leaders of Cuba know they should probably be worried.

So far, so good!

While the story of this week is Venezuela, it’s not the only thing happening right now. Here are three things to keep your eye on: One story with massive global political ramifications, one that should give everyone at least a little jolt of hope, and one story that brought lots of Americans together last week.

The Streets of Iran

Since 2022, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been struggling to control public outcry over the killing of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, at the hands of Iran’s “morality police,” who stopped her in Tehran for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly.”

The brutality of her killing and the subsequent cover-up triggered the most sustained country-wide political protest in the Islamic Republic’s history.

Rage over decades of oppression — especially aimed at women — and state-sponsored violence boiled over, eventually spreading to more than a hundred cities. The state responded with live ammunition, metal pellets, severe beatings, and mass arrests, leaving over 500 protestors dead and nearly 20,000 people arrested.

The Zan, Zendegi, Azadi — Woman, Life, Freedom — protests largely subsided; however, the movement left what seems to be a persistent, perhaps permanent rupture between Iranian society and the Islamic Republic. In fact, we still see everyday acts of defiance on the streets of Iran’s cities. Women unveiled in public, openly defying morality laws, and so on.

This is the tenuous state Iran’s leadership was in when, last week, Iran’s currency, the rial, suddenly crashed. ...