by Melanie Phillips
Ending the Islamic regime in Tehran would help reset the West’s moral compass
The stupendous courage of the Iranian people has inspired awe at this massive display of unquenchable human spirit. Hundreds of thousands of Iranian demonstrators literally walked into the guns in their struggle for freedom from the monstrous Islamic regime.
At time of writing, it’s unclear whether US President Donald Trump will come to their aid as he promised. An apparently planned US attack on Wednesday night was reportedly called off at the last minute.
The enormous risks of such an operation may mean that it will take place when all ducks are finally in a row. It’s hard to believe that Trump would be happy to be seen to have been played by the regime and thus leave it in place.
He must be aware that this wouldn’t merely be a stunning betrayal of the Iranian people. It wouldn’t merely torch his own reputation. The resulting weakening of America and strengthening of the axis of evil in the world would be a dire outcome.
For decades, the West has refused to face up to and deal with the threat posed by Iran.
Just as in the 1930s a refusal to grasp the true extent of the danger posed by Nazism led to the Holocaust and a terrible world war, so the eventual reckoning with the mullahs is turning out to be far more difficult and deadly than if the Iranian jihadi bullet had been bitten years ago.
Whatever may happen over the next few days or weeks, the terrible result of this vacillation is that many thousands of Iranians have now been murdered while the world did no more than wring its hands. And some haven’t even done that.