Yalda Moayeri, Whose Photo Trump Used In Iranian Revolution Tweet, Blasts Him For Misusing It
Monday saw the 40th anniversary of the Iranian revolution which turned the Middle Eastern country into the Islamic Republic when the Shah of Iran was overthrown. While many Iranians are at peace with the regime, U.S. President Donald Trump has made it clear that he is not.
To commemorate the occasion, Trump took to Twitter with a scathing message which he shared in both Persian and English for the benefit of both audiences, the Inquisitr previously reported.
Along with the message, which condemned “40 Years of Failure,” the president also shared an image. The photo, that of a woman using her headscarf to cover her face while walking through a cloud of smoke as she participates in a protest in late 2017, was captured by photojournalist Yalda Moayeri.
Angered by Trump’s misrepresentation of the photo, Moayeri took to her Instagram account to share the original image alongside Trump’s tweeted image to share her thoughts on what the president has done by using it, according to Newsweek.
“It would be a great honor for me if this image would be a symbol of freedom everywhere in the world. But having president Trump use it without my permission in a tweet in Persian even is a great shame for me and causes me deep sorrow,” she wrote as part of the lengthy caption.
“This photo is taken by the Iranian people and for the people of Iran and should not be abused by anyone else.”
Moayeri has been working as a photojournalist since she was just 19, using her skills to share with the world images of the horrific wars that have engulfed parts of the Middle East for years. Because of concerns for her safety, she had previously avoided naming herself as the photographer of the photo Trump used.
Those same protests were capitalized on by the U.S., with attempts to appeal directly to those protesting around the university in Tehran. It was around the same time it became apparent that Trump would likely pull the U.S. out of the Iran deal and slap sanctions back onto the country, causing further concern about the country’s economy and the political situation.
When the exit did happen in May 2018, part of those sanctions included travel bans on Iranians. According to Moayeri, those bans mean she cannot visit her father, who lives in the U.S., and is only serving to harm the people.
There have long been concerns that the official policy in the U.S. is to force regime change in Iran, although the administration has strongly denied this on numerous occasion.
