In Tehran's Enghelab Square, on the 47th anniversary of the 1979 U.S. embassy takeover, a state-televised mob burned a giant banner bearing the faces of President Donald J. Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — then walked directly to state media microphones and chanted, on live television, 'We will kill Trump.' This was not a spontaneous protest. This was a state production with the regime's full approval, broadcast in high definition for the world to see.
Iran's Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf declared that Americans voted 'NO TO WAR' — a direct reference to the midterm results — while Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dismissed the election as irrelevant because U.S. hostility, in his words, will never change. Read those two statements together and the picture is unmistakable: Tehran is not afraid of what happened at the ballot box. It is counting on it.
A Mock Execution Above Tajrish Square
Up in Tajrish Square, the regime went further. A Trump lookalike was locked inside a mock jail cell, then hoisted above the crowd in a staged execution as cameras from Tasnim, Reuters, and AP rolled. Forty-seven years to the day after Iranian revolutionaries seized the U.S. embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, the Islamic Republic built a gallows for the President of the United States and put it on international wire services.
That square is where the Islamic Republic has staged anti-American hate for decades. The display this week was deliberately timed to send a message — and the message is that the mullahs believe America's spine is broken.
They are throwing a victory party for the midterm results, and they want the world to see it.
Two Images of America
While a mob in Tehran burned an effigy of the President, First Lady Melania Trump was at the White House doing what this administration actually does — convening Russia and Ukraine at the same table for the first time in America's history. The ceasefire she helped broker saved 800 people this week. That is the contrast the legacy media will not show you: one side builds peace in Washington while the other burns a president in Tehran.
The mullahs are not hiding. They are broadcasting their bet on American retreat, and every politician who spent the last week celebrating the midterms needs to answer one question: did you know the Iranian regime was throwing you a party? Because they put it on state television — the chant, the burning banner, the mock gallows above Tajrish Square.
The world's villains are watching which America they fear. Right now, Tehran is signaling it fears neither.
