If, as many are predicting, the despised Islamo-fascist regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei falls in an Iranian grass-roots revolution, the world will have Donald Trump to thank once more. The collapse of the regime is by no means certain by the way, similar uprisings in 2019, 2022/23, were put down by overwhelming murderous force resulting in at least 2,000 deaths at the hands of the Ayatollah’s security forces the IRGC.
Indeed the so-called Supreme Leader has ordered the IRGC to take control of the cities – even hunting down regular police who have refused to use live rounds on demonstrators. The death toll today has been put at more than 500. More than 10,000 Iranians have also been detained by security services. The hospitals and morgues are overwhelmed as the bodies pile up.
Both figures will get a lot higher before this revolt ends, one way or the other.
But my contacts inside Iran tell me there is a feeling this one isn’t going away, that this could be the real deal that ends almost half a century of oppression and mediaeval-style fascist theocracy.
They say Khamenei and his “religious” thugs are weaker than they have ever been – indeed that the Ayatollah and many of his inner-circle have already made plans to scarper to Moscow.
And though virtue-signalling, Trump-despising, hand-wringers (like our own Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy for example) will hate it, this is due in large part to Donald Trump, who is currently changing the world for the better on a daily basis.
Trump’s enemies of course brand him a fool – they could not be more wrong. He is taking big, bold decisive action in a West too long defined by restraint, fear, and stifling and self-harming bureaucracy.
If Iran falls remember, a crucial supply line to Putin’s war in Ukraine also falls, as Tehran is by far the biggest supplier of drones to Russia. The implications are profound. In a televised rant Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf warned on Saturday Tehran would carry out preemptive strikes against Israel and US military assets in the region if Trump got involved in the protest.
It felt like an ant threatening an elephant.
Of course if this revolution really does rid Iran of the cancer of the Ayatollah’s tyranny it won’t really be down to Donald Trump.
The real work has been done by secret “resistance units” linked to the National Council of Resistance of Iran and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK).
For years these units have worked largely in the shadows quietly undermining the regime, with low-level actions from graffiti, to leafleting, to low-level demonstrations.
More importantly NCRI President Elect Maryam Rajavi, who has been campaigning for democracy for decades, is undoubtedly the best bet for Iran. She has long proposed a 10-point plan to create a secular democracy, with religion and state completely separate, equality for the sexes and the end of any nuclear programs. It reads like an Iranian Bill of Rights and portends an entirely new nation.
(It should be added here that the son of the Shah of Iran, who was deposed during the 1979 election, is using the current unrest to jockey for a return to his dad’s role as king. This is a terrible idea – so terrible that the Ayatollah’s disinformation units have been flooding social media with calls supporting “Baby Shah” – the idea being that the protest will be split as demonstrators say “He is not what I am risking my life for.”)
I have personally attended earlier Iranian protests where demonstrators chant “neither the Ayatollah nor the Shah”.
The regime’s plan to split the opposition claiming there is no coherent next step for this revolution is entirely wrong – but it is sophisticated and it is persuading some Western voices who ought to know when they are being played.
But all that remains to be seen, to be played out over the next few days and weeks.
What remains 100% certain is that Trump’s attack on Iran’s secret nuclear facilities and his greenlighting of not only similar strikes by Israel but the demolishing of Iran proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and even Syria has left the Ayatollah vulnerable like never before.
This weekend the US President warned the US would “unleash Hell” if any protesters are killed – and given the events in Venezuela and Greenland Khamenei knows he’s capable of anything.
The US under Trump has very quickly shifted from rhetorical containment to visible projections of force.
Even in his first term he ditched the wretched Obama-negotiated JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) which ended sanctions on Iran if they promised, I mean really pinky promised, not to build a nuke aimed at Israel.
They broke their promise so Trump tore up the spineless deal.
Full crippling sanctions were brought back in Autumn – and it is essentially these and their impact on Iranian lives which have triggered the current uprising.
MP Tom Tugendhat, who has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, reckons “The regime is over.”
I’m not quite so bullish yet – these are truly evil people, capable of any and all horrors.
But if it is, it will be down to the courage of the Iranian people, the persistence of people like Ms Rajavi, and the decisive force of Donald Trump.