Basic Thoughts on Iran – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

After a weekend in which bombs and missiles seemed to be crisscrossing the Middle East with blazing speed, I thought I’d throw out a few items for discussion and perhaps consensus where Israel and Iran are concerned.

Most of the below is obvious and perhaps painfully so. But what I’ve noticed since Israel began its current campaign to take down the underpinnings of Iran’s Islamofascist regime is that there are a lot of people, particularly on the right but not solely so, who seem to be strangely ambivalent, or worse, about who the right side is in this war. (RELATED: Israeli Air Strikes and Iranian Missile Barrages Are Far From Over )

But the old warmongering neocon impulse to plunge U.S. troops into some messianic effort to save Israel, or even the Iranian people, from the regime in Tehran, is the wrong impulse.

This is easily explained, and I’ll do that below. But first, let’s do some fundamental things…

Israel Is America’s Ally, and Israel Is a Force for Good

This is less and less appreciated, and not for particularly good reasons. The narrative that the Israelis are the bad guys in Gaza, coupled with the strange codicil which has it that the October 7 massacre was some sort of false flag event that the Israeli government permitted or even encouraged so as to enable Benjamin Netanyahu to set loose his dogs of war, is just plain dumb. (RELATED: New Report: Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah Plotted for Years to Destroy Israel on October 7)

We have more than enough experience with Hamas to know exactly who they are, and that knowledge dispels all of these notions of Israel being the villain. (RELATED: Hamas, Not Israel, Has Caused Gaza Suffering)

I could go on and on about the relative virtues of the Israelis, but what’s most important for our purposes is that Israel is an outpost of Western civilization in a part of the world which is spiritually significant to most of the world’s major religions but has nevertheless spent the bulk of the past 2,000 years bathed in blood and barbarianism. Israel’s commercial and intellectual success, particularly in comparison to its neighbors, speaks for itself.

Hamas Is the Bad Guy

Ask yourself why Gaza got all of its water and power from Israel before Oct. 7. It’s not that there was no money to build power plants or water purification facilities — foreign aid money has poured into Gaza for decades, in quantities more than sufficient to build desalination plants and supply the Gazans with all the clean water they could use for drinking or farming. And yet they’re completely dependent on Israel for their public utilities. (RELATED: Palestinian Support for Hamas Remains High)

While Gaza has more tunnels underneath it than London has, and not for public transportation.

Hamas tightly controls everything going into Gaza, something that has been painfully obvious given their treatment of food aid sent to the Gazans from abroad. You can’t blame that on Israel, though there are many who try. (RELATED: Palestinians’ ‘Allies’ Need to Abolish Hamas, Not Israel)

Hamas has made it painfully obvious that there is no prospect of their acting as a legitimate government. They’re a disorganized army, and they’ve turned Gaza into, essentially, a pirate colony. And it’s impossible to make peace with them because they won’t give up their stated goal of conquering Israel and wiping the Jews out of that part of the world.

Hamas is the bad guy. They started this current war on Oct. 7, 2023, with one of the most senseless campaigns of atrocities against civilians in modern history, and the fact that they were poorly prepared to win the conflict that followed, and have lost it very badly — does not confer virtue on them.

Hamas Is Iran

I don’t think I need to expound on this, but it’s worth reminding everyone that Iran is the primary bankroller of Hamas, and Iran calls Hamas’s shots. They’re paid stooges of the Iranians and their job is to conscript Palestinians as cannon fodder in an endless war designed to both wear the Israelis down and to convince stupid people around the world that it’s Israel with the lust for killing.

The level of evil one can attribute to decades of recruitment of murderers and terrorists for atrocity after atrocity, in order to keep a war going that produces nothing but more grievance, more hatred, more misery, and more calumny simply can’t be overstated. Rational minds can’t really even quantify it. (RELATED: Obama Trusted Iran — Israel Didn’t)

I don’t know that there is a historical analog to what the Iranians have done with Hamas that reaches this scale or duration. Certainly, none come to mind.

And amazingly, Hamas is only one of three proxies directed at making misery for Israel. Before Hamas was Hezbollah, and the latest proxy is the Houthis in Yemen — who don’t just menace Israel but are also engaged in harassing shipping in the Red Sea with Iranian-supplied missile strikes. (RELATED: Houthi and Israel Spar Over Airport Attacks as New Offensive Planned for Gaza)

In every case, the primary victims of Iran’s proxies aren’t the Israelis but rather the people of the lands those proxies occupy and intentionally misrule. The people of southern Lebanon don’t just suffer as a result of Israeli retaliation generated by Hezbollah, for example; they suffer because Hezbollah treats them the same way any other criminal gang treats the population they prey on. (RELATED: The UN’s Failure in Lebanon)

Iran Is the Foremost Oppressor in the Middle East, and the Race Isn’t Close

The terror imposed by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis is actually small potatoes considering the insanity of the Iranian regime toward its own people.

This is a regime that throws homosexuals off roofs or hangs them from construction cranes. It jails people for exercising religious beliefs different from the bizarre Twelver Shia ideology it espouses. It employs goon squads to intimidate and brutalize its people for political dissent. It engages in murder campaigns at home and abroad. And it has been exporting revolution all over the region.

Everyone knows this. The Iranian regime is an abjectly historical evil one. There is no possible defense for their actions.

And while it calls itself a democratic regime, it’s a sham. You can’t run for high office in Iran unless the mullahs say so, and they only say so if you fit into a very tight philosophical box.

The Iranian regime is a terrible neighbor, an awful influence on the world stage. It has developed no economic innovations and exports nothing of note beyond oil and military hardware.

Iran Is an Enemy of the United States

This has been true since 1979, when for no reason any rational observer could recognize beyond an attempt to humiliate its newly-designated Great Satan, the then-new Iranian regime sacked the U.S. embassy in Tehran and captured 66 hostages, holding 52 of them for more than a year. (RELATED: Write That Damned Book — Now!)

Ever since, it’s been a litany of terrorist attacks, military harassments, particularly in the Persian Gulf, and other hostile actions.

For which we’ve reciprocated.

But let’s not forget the fact that when our troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, the number one threat to their survival was improvised explosive devices — booby traps and roadside bombs — that were made in, and exported from, Iran.

They’ve never stopped calling us the Great Satan. They’ve designated a day for the celebration of their “Death to America” slogan.

The Iranian Regime Is Not Representative of the Iranian People

Perhaps most delegitimizing of all is that the regime is deeply, passionately hated by the bulk of the Iranian people.

Surveys show that the regime’s approval ratings sit well below 20 percent, with estimates ranging from 5 percent to 15 percent among the general population inside Iran.

A notable survey from Iran’s Culture Ministry conducted in September of last year reported over 90 percent dissatisfaction with the country’s current state, with many believing the situation is “beyond repair” due to authoritarian crackdowns and economic crises.

That wasn’t the only indication the regime is a bust with the folks. A survey conducted by GAMAAN in late 2023 with 158,000 respondents found that 80–81 percent of Iranians inside the country reject the Islamic Republic, with only 15 percent supporting it.

There have been multiple revolts by the Iranian people seeking to topple the regime. They’ve all been violently put down. A couple of them have coincided with Democrat administrations in the United States, which have chosen to prop up that regime rather than to let it fall, because they were engaged in attempts at a grand bargain with Iran in efforts to stop its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.

Iran’s Pursuit of Nukes Has a Specific, and Very Evil, Purpose

There is a narrative out there, which theoretically isn’t overly unreasonable, which holds that you can’t blame the Iranian regime for pursuing nukes, because once a regime has nuclear weapons, it’s immune to being deposed from without. (RELATED: Iranian Nuclear Talks Ahead of Jewish Holiday)

And that might have a bit of legitimacy but for the fact that regime officials have said again and again that the purpose of having nuclear weapons is to use them.

On Israel.

And a major nuclear blast in Israel will make the whole country unlivable for long enough to make the nation of Israel largely defunct.

And so it is entirely legitimate that, at all costs, Iran must be prevented from possessing nukes.

All this said…

It Is Not in America’s National Interest to Fight a War With Iran

There are neoconservatives now arguing, buoyed by Israel’s success in bombing key Iranian installations and knocking out much of the regime’s leadership, that America must now join the fight and remove the Iranian regime from power by force. (RELATED: Iran Miscalculated. The Ayatollahs Must be Removed.)

Or at minimum, we should be joining the Israelis in the airstrikes against regime targets and particularly their nuclear sites, because we’re the only ones with the bunker-buster bombs that can get deep enough into the armor of those facilities to take them out. (RELATED: The West Has a Chance to Defeat the New Nazism)

And let’s understand that Israel’s military hardware is our military hardware. We sold them everything they’ve got, including the reported 300 Hellfire missiles they used in the first few days of the air campaign.

If the Israelis want to buy bunker-busters from us, that’s fine. But that’s not the same thing as conducting airstrikes against them or worse, sending in SEAL Team Six or the Marines.

We have far too much going on domestically to engage in that.

Iran Does Need a Regime Change, But It’s Not Up to Us or Israel to Make That Happen

What solves the Iranian nuclear threat isn’t bunker-busters, though. What solves it is the replacement of that regime with something different, something willing to work with the rest of the region, including Israel (before the ayatollahs came along, there wasn’t a particular problem between Iran and Israel), and more importantly, the rest of the world, including the West.

But the most important thing to recognize is that no legitimate government in Iran can be installed by the United States, and clearly, no legitimate government can be installed by Israel.

This is the responsibility of the people of Iran, who have tolerated 46 years of oppression and misrepresentation by a psychotic, tyrannical, evil elite that they should have thrown off years ago. The Iranians are the only ones who can replace that regime with a legitimate government that represents them. It doesn’t even have to be a democracy; in fact, in the short term, it might be a lot easier if some strongman acceptable to the people is able to take power and pacify the country while resetting its international posture before turning the reins over to a democratically elected government.

And if Israel is able to decapitate enough of the current regime to create an opening for the Iranians to fill the resulting power vacuum, they’ll have done a service to the world.

It isn’t a good idea for us to do that service. Why?

Iran Won’t Hit Us Militarily, but That Doesn’t Mean They’re Not a Threat

The thing about having a wide-open border for 12 of the past 17 years is that we have absolutely no idea what has come into this country. We think we might have a handle on the security threats posed by hostile foreign powers, but we really don’t.

And Iran is just about the most pernicious and bold purveyor of assassins, bombers, spies, and saboteurs on earth. It would be irrational beyond measure to discount what damage the Iranians could do using fifth columnists should we get into a shooting war with them.

This isn’t a calculation based on cowardice. It’s a calculation based on risk and reward, and return on investment.

It will take the Iranian people standing up in order to remove that regime. That will either happen or it won’t. Now seems like a really good time for it, but we can’t force it.

And if we try, the regime will have no choice but to fire off whatever evil plans it might have with sleeper agents or other covert assets we’ve let them embed here.

It’s far better to keep the posture President Trump has kept, which is to say that he wants Iran to sit down and do a deal with the rest of the world, a deal which involves Iran accepting a role as a peaceful nation which doesn’t chase the nuclear car or foment terrorism or revolution in other countries. He’s set himself up as the good cop to Israel’s bad cop in the negotiations the Iranians now say they want but don’t seem to be very serious about engaging in.

By doing so, he’s largely foreclosed on any strategic value in hitting the U.S. with terrorist attacks on our soil. And he’s painted Iran as a pariah, putting them in a box that only a change in character, if not the regime as a whole, can break them out of.

Israel has complete air superiority over Iran, which means they’ll continue to degrade the Iranian regime’s assets until it can’t control its people any longer, and at that point, the regime will have to tumble. There isn’t much danger in the Iranian people suddenly falling in love with the ayatollahs thanks to an external threat — study warfare, and what you’ll realize is that countries clearly on the losing side of a war come apart rather than holding together more tightly.

That means the answer is to watch, and wait, and hope the Iranian people emerge as the true heroes of this story.

I hope everyone knows this. But based on everything I see, I’m not confident it’s as well understood as it should be.

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