The Islamic Republic Of Iran was founded after a revolution overthrew its monarch. That revolution was aided and abetted by a cabal of western countries, including France and America (thank you Jimmy Carter!), and various leftist political groups that found Iran’s embrace of the West and Israel to be unacceptable.
Soon after the Shah left Iran and his replacement failed to consolidate power, the Mullahs rushed in. They had been fomenting revolution for years, and the most fanatical of them, Ayatollah Khomeini, seized power and promptly imprisoned or murdered his political opponents, in particular the starry-eyed leftists who saw Iran becoming some sort of progressive Nirvana.
They were wrong, and instead Iran became the epicenter of Islamic terror, with its tentacles spread across the world. They also created proxies within other countries to facilitate their expansionist goals in the region. Much of the Islamic terror that spread through the West could be traced to active or tacit support from Iran and its theocratic dictators. They also created a comprehensive surveillance state within Iran, and ferociously enforced their version of Shia Islam. Other religions withered, women were cast back into the 7th century, murder, torture, and rape became a tool of the government, and it was all supported by the insatiable thirst for Iranian oil, coupled with the typical leftist support of anything that degrades traditional Western culture.
Iran’s targets were Israel first and foremost, and America. Little Satan and Big Satan, and they didn’t pretend anything different. For 46 years the goal of the dictators of Iran was the destruction of Israel, the destruction of America, and a global conflagration that would usher in the end times that would return their 12th Imam, a tenet of Shia Islam.
It was war against Israel, America, and the West, but the flaccid thinkers and accommodationists who passed for western political elites wouldn’t, or couldn’t understand that there was no accommodation to be made with a theocratic dictatorship whose goals were clear. So they mostly ignored the war, accepted the casualties, and hoped that kicking the can down the road would eventually moderate the savagery of the Iranian government.
They too were wrong, and Israel’s behind-the-scenes work to degrade the Iranian nuclear program was the only thing that kept the West from a third World War, this time with nuclear weapons.
That is, until the election of Donald Trump!
Trump’s courageous decision to face Tehran head-on
The strongest argument that President Donald Trump’s political opponents can muster to decry his decision to order American forces to join with Israel to act against Iran is that he is launching a “war of choice,” rather than seeking to avert an imminent threat to American interests or security. Even his sternest critics, such as the editorial page of The New York Times, acknowledged that the government of Iran is not merely a brutal oppressor and a constant threat to the rest of the Middle East as well as to the West, but also combines a “murderous ideology with nuclear ambitions.”
Every U.S. president for the last quarter-century has asserted that America will never let Iran get a nuclear weapon and was prepared to use force to prevent that from happening. But only Trump seems to have fully grasped the stark nature of the threat that Tehran poses to the United States—and the world.
The goal…perhaps the only goal…of the Iranian theocracy was the production of nuclear weapons to be used against Israel, America, and probably Europe. Any other interpretation of their actions is arrant nonsense or willful ignorance. The Iranian dictators were excellent practitioners of the Muslim penchant for lying and misdirection, or “taqiyya.” And the world was content to be fooled!
But not President Donald Trump. In fact, his own brand of American taqiyya seemed to work rather well on Iran, whose leadership was surprised by the attacks of February 28th. The Iranians assumed that their own obfuscation would buy them time, and that their own attacks on American installations, Israel, and a few other Arab nations in the region would be on their timetable.
Whoops!
Israel’s decapitation of the leadership, combined with a massive degradation of Iran’s military infrastructure that only America could achieve, has created the opportunity for another revolution in Iran…one that will hopefully usher in a government that will consider the welfare of the Iranian people to be paramount.
If the American and Israeli attacks continue, and if the dictatorship’s power base is damaged enough be attacked from within Iran by whatever coalition is being cobbled together, and if that coalition can create a functioning government, and if its neighbors do not begin to meddle, then the Iranian people have a chance to become what they once were, a vibrant, energetic, successful culture!
There are a lot of “ifs” in that paragraph, and there are no guarantees, even with the staunch support of America and its clear-eyed president! But it is difficult to imagine an outcome that is any worse than the current state of affairs.
But the established world order has come to an end. Iran will not be the dominant player in the Middle East, and will find it increasingly difficult to continue its evil ways around the world, even if by some malign turn of events the theocracy survives.
And…hopefully…President Trump is parsimonious with American treasure, and does not commit to a rebuilding of Iran at the expense of the American taxpayer. It is the Iranian people who should do the work!
What to me is elephant in the room is that Europe is flaccidly, in the open for the world to see, mumbling to themselves incoherently and no one talks about it in the press. The U.S. and any other nations who have an ounce of self respect and self interest need to bail out treaties and associations with Europe. Period.
We should maintain relationships of convenience with the European powers. But that goes with the understanding that we run the relationship.