“How Can Trump Help Iran’s Protesters? Be Quiet.” —Susan Rice, tweeting a New York Times headline on Dec. 31, 2017

In two sentences, Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor (and well-documented liar) reiterates the moral bankruptcy of her former boss. In 2009, when hundreds of thousands of demonstrators risked their lives to protest Iran’s rigged elections, Obama decided America shouldn’t “meddle” in Iran’s internal affairs (unlike his administration’s efforts to facilitate meddling in the 2015 Israeli election). “The last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States,” he stated at the time.

What he didn’t state? That he preferred implementing his contemptible nuclear deal to abetting regime change. That he preferred a postmodern U.S. foreign policy requiring apologies, a “leading from behind” strategy that set the entire Middle East on fire, and enabling Iranian dreams of a “Shiite Crescent” across the entire region. A Shiite Crescent largely underwritten by a cash payment of $1.7 billion sent to Tehran’s tyrannical theocrats, even as the administration had the temerity to insist it was necessitated by international sanctions isolating Iran from the international finance system.

Moreover, in pursuit of that deal, the Obama administration was willing to lie about the timeline of negotiations and the nature of the regime, evade constitutional requirements to win its congressional approval (courtesy of a successful Democrat Party filibuster), and undermine a DEA operation attempting to prevent Iranian client Hezbollah from smuggling millions of dollars of cocaine into the United States.

In spite of it all — along with the pathetically predictable omission/commission machinations of the Democrat/Media Complex dedicated to reframing the narrative in Obama’s favor — the world is now learning neither the administration’s payoff, nor the additional billions that poured into Iran following the lifting of sanctions, mollified ordinary Iranians left out of the loop. While the ruling elites have been enriched, real unemployment (as opposed to fudged government statistics) hovers around 22.5%, inflation is running at 10%, pushing up the costs of basic necessities, and government corruption has been, as The New Arab puts it, “widespread, institutionalised, and systemic.”

In short, the promises of an economic boom the elimination of sanctions was supposed to generate were fraudulent.

A sampling of the shouts being heard among the protesters is indicative. They include “Death to the dictator,” “Death to Khamenei,” “Today is the mourning day,” “the rights of our nation are plundered by mullahs,” and “We die and will get back Iran.” And when demonstrators were attacked by the police they shouted, “Police, go arrest the thieves.”

Nonetheless, the protests — and the scores of deaths engendered by them — remain insufficiently persuasive to more cluelessly arrogant Obama administration officials who despise President Donald Trump’s full-throated support of the revolutionaries, “acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime.” Support that began months before the current uprising, when he stood before the UN General Assembly last September and predicted the regime’s demise. “Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, and the day will come when the Iranian people will face a choice,” Trump stated. “Will they continue down the path of poverty, bloodshed, and terror? Or will the Iranian people return to the nation’s proud roots as a center of civilization, culture, and wealth where their people can be happy and prosperous once again?”

Such rhetoric stands in stark contrast to that of feckless former Secretary of State John Kerry, who insists this is “an Iranian moment and not anyone else’s.” The same John Kerry who admitted that a portion of the money derived from the lifting of sanctions would support terror.

In addition to Kerry, we have former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes — who bragged about cultivating, useful idiot, media dupes to disseminate the lies used to sell the Iran deal — also declaring the protests are “about what Iranians want for Iran, and not about us.”

And last but not least, former Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who offered up predictably progressive pabulum. “The Iranian people, especially the young, are protesting for the freedom and future they deserve,” she tweeted. “I hope their government responds peacefully and supports their hopes.”

As beaten and bloodied Iranian survivors are discovering, hope is not a strategy.

“The events unfolding in Iran right now are therefore a long time coming, and ought to be welcomed not only by those fearful of the ‘Islamic bomb’ that Iran is hell-bent on possessing and which the Obama administration’s disgraceful, faciliatory ‘deal’ made all but inevitable, but by all adherents of the Western notion of freedom” asserts columnist Michael Walsh.

Walsh’s heart is in the right place, but as he himself has said in another column, a substantial number of leftists in media and the Democrat Party “have adopted a single unwavering posture toward Republican and conservative presidents: they’re against them, no matter what.” Moreover, he insists the communist-based “critical theory” that drives much of that opposition arises from the idea that “there is nothing foundational about Western Civilization that should not be attacked, countermanded, or demolished.”

Thus, whether they realize it or not, Democrats and their media enablers have a serious dilemma, especially as it relates to the 2018 election. If they voice full support for regime change in Iran, they will not only repudiate eight years of support for Obama’s contemptible Iranian machinations, but align themselves with Donald Trump. The same Donald Trump they so despise that they have formalized a “Resistance” movement against him.

Even more ominous, if the Iranian counter-revolution is successful and the American economy maintains its upward swing, Democrats will be forced to face their ultimate nightmare: running against peace and prosperity in the 2018 midterms.

The alternative? Publicly supporting the demonstrations and privately hoping they fail. Or, if they do fail, attempting to pin that failure on Trump — for his unambiguous support of freedom.

In the meantime, Trump should “continue issuing condemnations daily, including through Persian-language media outlets, and follow up with sanctions targeting corruption and human-rights abuses,” Wall Street Journal columnists Mark Dubowitz and Ray Takeyh declare. They further insist Congress should “rediscover its once-bipartisan determination to hold the regime accountable for its crimes and push America’s European allies to overcome their mercantile greed and support Iranians striving to be free from theocracy.”

The former assertion is obvious. The latter assertion? For a Democrat Party determined to delegitimize a Trump presidency by any means necessary, it’s one of the most compelling “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” political decisions they have faced in over a decade.