The Iranian Regime - A 46-Year Reign of Terror Could End

By Olivia Pierson

Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear sites and military leaders over the weekend has been a long time coming. I say this because, during the unpopular Iraq War to overthrow Saddam Hussein, I remember a multitude of commentators saying that “all roads lead to Tehran.”

We knew at that time how committed the Iranian regime was to fomenting terrorism all over the Middle East, which extended significantly into the West. Like mad Saddam, the regime was always highly vocal about its commitment to acquiring nuclear weapons. If anybody thinks for a moment that the regime would not use such weapons to first wipe Israel from the face of the Earth, then they need a brain transplant. This regime absolutely thrives on cruelty and barbarism, death and destruction. In its eyes, freedom and personal liberty mean nothing good.

And there’s the rub. After Saddam was toppled — and after 24 years of brutal oppression — the Iraqi people’s psyche was so deeply scarred that they couldn’t really believe he was no longer their dictator and barely knew what to do in a post-liberation world. Christopher Hitchens drew attention to this in his 2003 Vanity Fair article, “Saddam’s Long Good-Bye,” where he wrote: 

“And, in the ground-down wasteland of southern Iraq, only the old could remember any time before Saddam. The colonisation of the mind still persisted, with trauma right below the surface.”

Hitchens likened this to Romanians after Ceausescu’s fall, noting the disbelief among Iraqis that Saddam’s reign had actually ended, underscoring the depth of their psychological subjugation.

I note that from exile, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi is rallying the Iranian people to seize this opportunity to overthrow the regime. That solution can only lie with the people since they are the ones who have to do it — and bear the brunt. We’re not looking at a regime change intervention along the lines of what the coalition forces did in Iraq, or are we?

Netanyahu has vowed support from Israel, and the U.S. with its 40,000 troops in the region, including about 2,500 in Iraq, could help tip the scales toward a better future for Iranians, but the lessons of the past have been bitterly hard-won, if truly won at all, and are the height of unpopularity. 

I know Iran is not Iraq. It’s population is highly educated, its borders have not been artificially imposed and Persian culture is far more culturally cohesive, with a stronger national identity dating back 3000 years. 

In the wake of Israel’s audacious strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites and military leadership, a new path is opening up for Iran which could completely alter the future of its people after 46 years of oppression and theocratic terror. We’re only witnessing the beginning of whatever this turns into, but I deeply hope that a free Iran can emerge and build itself into a beacon of culture, liberty, and human  flourishing, as Israel has managed to do for itself.