It appears that we are living through a historic moment, the moment when the threat of the Islamic Republic may be ended forever and an Iran that respects the will of its citizens and does not threaten its neighbors may arise.
The Iranian people have had enough. Fully aware of the brutality of the rulers who have oppressed them for 46 years, they have bravely risen up to demand change, and continue to demonstrate even as the Ayatollahs have murdered thousands in recent days. With rampant inflation and a water crisis caused by decades of corruption and mismanagement, the regime has lost all legitimacy and the people are desperate for change, They yearn for freedom.
It is heartening that for once, America’s leader has actually expressed support for Iran’s people rather than the regime which oppresses them. President Donald Trump has not repeated the mistake Barack Obama made during the 2009 protests when he refused to offer so much as a word of support for the Iranian people who protested the stealing of the presidential election by the regime. Obama chose the appeasement of the Ayatollahs from the first through the last day of his presidency over demonstrating leadership, the defense of human rights, and America’s interests and self-defense.
Trump has supported the protesters rhetorically, something previous presidents failed to do, and has threatened the Ayatollahs’ regime should they begin killing protesters en masse.
Well, the regime has begun to do exactly what Trump warned them not to do. Thousands of civilians have been killed, with some reports putting the death toll in the tens of thousands - all in under a week since the regime cut off internet access and phone lines at the start of its brutal crackdown.
Now that Iran’s regime has crossed Trump’s red line, merely improving on the pitiful standard set by Obama in 2009 is not enough. He must now also avoid the mistake Obama made in 2013 when he failed to enforce the red line he established the year before warning the Assad regime not to use chemical weapons on the Syrian peopleץ Obama did not act when Assad’s forces murdered 1,500 civilians with chemical weapons.
Threats are meaningless without the ability and, just as importantly, the will to follow through on said threats if necessary. Trump’s track record in this area has been better than his immediate predecessors. He ordered the elimination of Qassem Soleimani, the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
This historic moment calls for that same decisiveness from Trump. He already proved that the US has the capability, both with the limited but decisive action he ordered against Iran last June and with the recent capture of Maduro. He has the opportunity to truly help the Iranian people make history at little risk and without an Iraq-style quagmire.
The world will be a very different place if the Iranian people succeed in freeing themselves from their oppressors. An Iran that devotes itself to the interests of its citizenry instead of funding Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, an Iran that pursues friendship with the world instead of planning hundreds of terrorist attacks against the world, is in sight for the first time in decades.
Freedom for Iran could mean freedom for Lebanon once Hezbollah loses its master in Tehran. Freedom for Iran would mean less money and fewer weapons for Hamas and for terrorists in Judea and Samaria. Freedom for Iran would mean fewer terrorist plots against Jews, Christians, and even Iranians around the world.
History will judge those who stood on the side of the Ayatollahs, the genocidal and reactionary regime that murders women for wearing their hair coverings incorrectly. The current silence from the college crowds who demonstrated for Hamas for over two years, supposedly because they believed in “freedom" and opposed killing civilians, is telling.
The reason those who marched and shouted against Israel’s attempts to defend the lives of and rescue its own civilians and children cannot muster a word about Iran’s slaughter of its own people - and if they do mention it all, it is to support Iran killing tens of thousands of civilians - is because the anti-Israel demonstrations were never about “freedom" or “human rights." They were run by Marxists and jihadists for the sole purpose of justifying massacres of civilians and genocide, and they were attended by lemmings who only think and do what they are told.
They can never demonstrate against regimes which their masters support, no matter how many atrocities those regimes commit or how many thousands of innocents they slaughter. The lemmings can never support freedom if freedom means fewer dead Jews.
As for Israel, we must be prepared for all scenarios, including the regime’s survival and its continued efforts to wipe us off the map. We must also be prepared for an attack in a last-ditch effort by the regime to survive or to take us down with the Ayatollahs. Lastly, we must be prepared to extend a hand of friendship should the Iranian people regain their freedom. Israel has a lot to offer when it comes to addressing Iran’s existential water crisis, and help in that arena could forge a friendship even stronger than the one that existed before the rise of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
History does not happen by itself. Whether you are an ordinary Iranian citizen risking everything for a future with freedom and prosperity, a small but determined and successful democracy in a region of dictatorships, or the leader of the greatest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen, history demands action.