By: Douglas Murray / New York Post
Translation: Telegrafi.com

For 46 years, the Islamic Revolutionary Government has tortured the people of Iran. From the moment Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in Paris, he managed to plunge one of the world's greatest cultures into a new age of darkness.

Since 1979, this regime has massacred and executed its internal political opponents. It has publicly hanged people convicted of “crimes against morality,” including those convicted of the “crime” of being homosexual. It has sponsored terrorism throughout the Middle East, Europe, and America.

This regime has been the greatest colonialist and imperialist power in the Middle East. And it has attempted to assassinate a US president, a US secretary of state, and a US national security advisor - among others - on American soil.

Given this, one would think that there would be marches against the ayatollahs, for weeks on end, in Western cities. But that is not what happened. When the Iranian people rose up before (like in the Green Revolution of 2009), they did so alone. Then, President Obama did nothing to support the pro-democracy movement in Iran. He simply stood back and allowed the protesting women to be shot in the head by the filthy Basij militia and other government forces.

Decade of weakness

What's different this time?

Two things. First is the scale of the anti-regime protests inside Iran. In recent days, the Iranian government has shut down the internet in an attempt to stop the people from coordinating. But the brave Iranian people are taking to the streets by the hundreds of thousands. They have torn down symbols of the regime and attacked its buildings. This is already bigger than any previous uprising.

The second thing that's different this time is that Donald Trump is in the White House.

In 1979, when the Iranian Revolution occurred, a different kind of president was in the Oval Office. Jimmy Carter not only allowed the revolution to happen, but he also ignominiously failed to release the 66 Americans who were taken hostage by the forces that had overthrown the Shah.

It was a time of terrible weakness in American foreign policy. The ayatollahs knew this - and they exploited it. They also knew that Obama would do nothing in 2009 to support the pro-Western, pro-American protesters who took to the streets of Iran.

Perhaps it was inevitable that American leadership would be so weak. Above all, since the Iranian Revolution began in 1979, the event was misunderstood in much of the West.

For example, the renowned left-wing intellectual Michel Foucault - still one of the most cited "idiots" in American academia - claimed that Khomeini would bring a spiritual revolution to Iran that would eliminate those terrible Western "sins" - such as capitalism and materialism.

New York Times published an article stating that the description of Ayatollah Khomeini “as a fanatic and bearer of harsh prejudices certainly and fortunately appears untrue.” While the magazine Foreign Affairs wrote that "Khomeini's Islamic Republic is expected to have a doctrine of social justice at its center; by all indications, he will be flexible in his interpretation of the Quran."

All these opinions and many others fell flat. Khomeini and his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, were and are fanatics. They massacred hundreds of their leftist and trade union opponents in Iranian prisons. They forced a liberal society into a place where all women had to cover their heads. Their “morality police” patrolled the country looking for women so they could arrest and beat them. They kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed students who opposed them. And the West, all the while, did nothing.

Trump's options

Of course, the question for many years was "what can we do"?

One answer - given by weak leaders in the US and Europe - was to try to accept the Iranian Revolution. But the regime in Iran did not want to be part of the same world as us. They wanted to keep shouting "Death to America." They wanted to keep promising the destruction of America and much of the West. They wanted to maintain their fundamentalist Islamic revolution and expand it throughout the region and then the world.

Now that the brave people of Iran are on the streets, it is time to show them that this time they are not alone.

It is not only in the best interest of the region, but in the best interest of the world that the world's largest terrorist government falls.

But how can this be achieved?

President Trump has already issued a clear warning to the Ayatollah. Footage that has been smuggled out of Iran offers evidence of thousands of Iranian citizens who the regime has already massacred. The regime's threat to launch public executions of protesters drew a sharp response from President Trump, who warned that if this were to happen, America would intervene.

However, as some information from anti-Trump circles has shown, there is a deep fear in Washington and other capitals that originates from Afghanistan and Iraq.

The rule back then was the old Pottery Barn rule: "If you break it, it's yours."

But, as can be seen from Trump's bold action in Venezuela, he acts differently.

His policy is that sometimes things are just broken and you have to do minimal intervention to fix them. Or, let the people of the country fix them themselves.

The US can help activists and allies inside Iran to strike at the regime's key centers of terror. We can strike at the headquarters of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Basij militia that are waging war against the Iranian people.

America can also help people inside Iran target those responsible for terror.

By doing so, we can show that the people who want freedom in Iran have a friend in the United States. And that those who kill their own people and spread terror around the world will not go unpunished.

President Trump has a historic opportunity. He can help end Iran's half-century nightmare and make up for 46 years of foreign policy failures. By doing so, he will prove that - unlike his predecessors - he is the president who stood by freedom in the face of terror. /Telegraph/

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