A southern Iranian city organized a dramatization of President Donald Trump being arrested by Iranian soldiers as part of festivities to celebrate the anniversary of the barbaric Islamic regime seizing power on Monday.
Iran’s terror regime took over Tehran 46 years ago as of Monday, an occasion marked throughout the country with chants of “death to America,” jingoistic bombast, and displays of anti-American and anti-Israeli vitriol. In Tehran, President Masoud Pezeshkian delivered a speech attacking President Trump for reimposing his “maximum pressure” policy on the country and refusing to consider talks with the United States. Other leaders similarly condemned America and vowed to survive mounting sanctions and other actions meant to limit the scope of Iran’s malign influence around the world.
In the southern city of In Bandar Abbas, regime loyalists celebrated the anniversary by dressing a man in a mask of President Trump and his signature red tie, then staging a mock arrest. Video from state media shared by the dissident outlet Iran International showed “Trump” brandishing what appeared to be a bottle of liquor during his “arrest” – a strange detail given Trump’s well-known lifestyle decision to avoid alcohol.
A symbolic arrest of US President Donald Trump was staged in Bandar Abbas, southern Iran, during the events marking the 46th anniversary of the establishment of the Islamic Republic on Monday.pic.twitter.com/qw5yAL2X6i
— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) February 10, 2025
Photo essays published in Iranian state media outlets on Monday showed massive, government-mandated marches in most of Iran’s major cities. In some of the events, regime supporters displayed coffins bearing American and Israeli flags, presumably a threat to kill citizens of those countries. Effigies of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were also common, often in police uniforms or cages. Also prominent during the events were portraits of Qasem Soleimani, the late head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force who Trump killed in an airstrike in 2020. As Quds Force chief, Soleimani was Iran’s most effective terrorist strategist and envoy to Iran’s potent network of terrorist proxies, including Iraqi terror militias, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
The Iranian state propaganda network PressTV reported that “millions of Iranians from all walks of life” joined the celebrations, bringing to the events “fervor and patriotic zeal.”
“The waves of demonstrators converged on iconic spots, such as the capital’s Azadi Square and Enqelab Square, filling the air with resounding chants of ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel,'” the outlet detailed, “reiterating Iran’s steadfast opposition to foreign interference, imperialist hegemony, and Western-backed occupation and aggression.”
Addressing crowds in Tehran, Pezeshkian used his appearance to condemn Trump’s return to “maximum pressure” and assure his audience – and, presumably, “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – that he would not accept negotiations with the White House.
“Trump says he wants to negotiate, yet at the same time, he signs a document [ordering] all kinds of plots to bring the Islamic Revolution to its knees,” Pezeshkian noted, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). “They say they want to negotiate, but if you truly intended to negotiate, why did you commit these follies?
“Israel, with American backing, is the real source of insecurity, bombing innocent people in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and wherever it wants,” he continued. “The U.S. claims to seek peace, but who has truly disrupted the region? Who is responsible for massacre and destruction in the region?”
The current war between Israel and the jihadist terror organization Hamas, which governed the Gaza Strip, began after Hamas invaded Israel in October 2023 and killed, abducted, raped, and tortured hundreds of people. Hamas, according to the State Department, receives $100 million a year from Pezeshkian’s government alongside other Palestinian terrorist groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
Khamenei, who outranks Pezeshkian, made clear in remarks last week that he would not tolerate any attempts at diplomacy with the Trump administration, calling talks “unintelligent and dishonorable.”
“Some people pretend that if we sit at the negotiating table, some problem will be solved, but the fact that we must understand correctly is that negotiating with the US has no effect on solving the country’s problems,” Khamenei asserted.
The Iranian terror state has been trying to prosecute Trump as a criminal since the airstrike against Soleimani, making negotiations with his administration, as opposed to any other president, especially toxic to Khamenei. At Soleimani’s funeral in January 2020, a speaker suggested that Muslims around the world donate to a fund to set a bounty for killing Trump; 80 million Muslims donating a dollar could raise $80 million, he mused.
In June of that year, the Iranian government issued an arrest warrant for Trump and 35 other people, most of them Americans, identified as having played a role in the Soleimani airstrike. Tehran attempted to convince Interpol to issue a “red notice,” or request for arrest, for Trump, but failed to do so.
More recently, in November, the Department of Justice revealed that it had identified an “Iranian asset” working in the greater New York area to organize assassinations on behalf of Tehran on U.S. soil. Trump was among the named targets. The indictment of the suspects indicated that the Iranian government was waiting to kill Trump after the 2024 presidential election, assuming that he would lose and then not benefit from Secret Service protection.
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