Deputy Iranian FM has told BBC ‘ball is in America’s court,’ says talks have been ‘positive’; Iran won’t give up missiles, senior diplomat says, calling them ‘defensive capabilities’
Iran is in no position to compromise anything nor demand anything, nor, as is their wont, set conditions.
What we see in Iran under the Ayatollahs is a combination of narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism all justified by their religion, but essentially human self-interest by really evil human beings. When these traits intersect, the individual doesn't just lack empathy, they derive intrinsic utility from destruction.
The Ayatollah's great "beyond evil" is industrialised cruelty, where the scale of suffering (such as genocides or total war) outpaces the human capacity to process it. It represents a collapse of the ethical framework that allows a society to function.
What we see in Iran under the Ayatollahs, clothed in pretentious holy garments and “holiness", is the absence of good. It is something "beyond evil" and, given half a chance, would be an utter void where even the memory of "the Good" is erased.
The Ayatollahs and radical Islam, if not Islam itself, seeks a force beyond evil. What they seek is an un-creation and a recreation of the world in their primitive, pre-civilisation, pagan, medieval image and misguided self-justified imagination. They seek their definition of "divinity" that is a power so immense and terrifyingly "other" that it transcends human morality entirely. It is malevolent, or simply indifferent. They are beyond evil, which means reaching a state of total transgression. They seek power disabusing their concept of G-d.
The Ayatollahs' "beyond evil" moves past the simple binary of "right vs. wrong" and enters the territory of amorality, where the laws of human ethics simply fail to apply. The Iranian social constructs we see in all they say is used by the weak to restrain the strong, America and Israel. They are "beyond evil" in their misguided belief that they are Übermenschen. We have seen this before with the Nazis.
The Ayatollahs and their henchmen and acolytes do not follow external laws, but create their own new set of ethics. It is the act of looking at the world without the "lens" of morality, seeing only Will to Power and raw existence. They show the human tendency to prioritise self-interest "moral law". They are a bureaucracy or technology which causes mass suffering not out of malice, but because it functions outside of human feeling. Theirs is a perspective so cold and analytical that "evil" is seen merely as a necessary biological or mechanical function to achieve their ends.
What the world must face is the realisation that moral categories are "human, all too human" and that reality in Iran under the Ayatollahs is fundamentally indifferent to their people's suffering or anyone's suffering.
David Hersch is Chairman of SAIPAC, the South African Israel Public Affairs Committee. Former chairman of the South African Zionist Federation (Cape Council) as well as a former national vice-chairman of the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF). He is also former member of the South Jewish Board of Deputies (Cape Council). Retired businessman and broadcaster.
15 February 2026